The House You Live In
by mascaret
Summary: When someone else succeeds in rescuing Agnes from Kirk before he can Reddington struggles to figure out who while Liz struggles to figure out why. Diverged from canon around episode 4.6. It's Mr. Kaplan's return played out a little differently than in the back half of season 4. Ch 16 Liz confronts Reddington about who Mr. Kaplan was to him.
1. Chapter 1

A/N Fair warning – the whole story was written quick and dirty in two days. Could use some more editing and I would love a beta for it but I know from experience that if I don't at least start posting it before 4.5 airs it will become non canon and I will never bother posting it.

Two separate time lines going on.

Go first in the world, go forth with your fears  
Remember a price must be paid  
Be always too soon, be never too fast  
At the time when all bets must be laid  
Beware of the darkness, be kind to your children  
Remember the woman who waits  
And the house you live in will never fall down  
If you pity the stranger who stands at your gate

And he who is wise will not criticize  
When other men fail at the game  
Beware of strange faces and dark dingy places  
Be careful while bending the law  
And the house you live in will never fall down  
If you pity the stranger who stands at your door

-The House You Live In (abridged) Gordon Lightfoot

 _The House You Live In_

Reddington was giving orders. "Try to hold off on gunfire as long as you can. As soon as he hears the first shot Kirk will attempt to leave. We can't have him escaping again."

No, not like he did in Cuba or Nova Scotia or Amsterdam or New York or -

"Liz?" Tom interrupted her train of thought.

Surely Kirk _had_ to be running out of hidey holes.

It had been more than two months and even more dead ends since Elizabeth had last seen her daughter on the web camera Kirk had set up for her.

Tom called her name again. "Elizabeth?"

Despondently, she responded. "It's been so long since she has seen us. Every night I go to sleep worrying, wondering if she will even remember me."

She shrugged off Tom's attempt to touch her shoulder. Things had been strained between them since his botched rescue attempt.

She continued. "It's been so long, she's probably changed so much. Sometimes I wonder if I would even recognize her if I saw her on the street."

"Liz -" Tom started to say something.

Reddington talked over him. "Lizzie, you would know her." He sounded so sure, so confident as he repeated himself. "You would know. A mother doesn't ever forget her child."

"You're sure Agnes is in there with Kirk?" Elizabeth asked.

He nodded.

"This is it. This is really it?" Elizabeth pleaded.

Reddington promised her. "This is it."

Reaching out, she squeezed Tom's hand. Elizabeth half sighed half begged. "We're going to get our baby back."

Coming to the back of the van, Dembe interrupted. "Something's not right."

As a group, they moved to where Baz and the others were assembled.

Baz expanded upon Dembe's concern. "I don't like it. They're not moving. What kind of a patrol doesn't patrol? "

Dembe chimed in with more doubts. "Their relief shift should have come out by now. They haven't."

Reddington frowned. "Tom, keep Elizabeth here."

Elizabeth tried to protest. "You can't just -"

Reddington pumped the rifle in his hand. "- Everyone else, let's go. Remember - _hold off_ on your gunfire as long as you can."

000

Baz sneaked up on one of Kirk's sentries. Leaning against the wall, the man appeared to have fallen asleep at his post. Heeding Red's order, using the butt of his gun, Baz struck him in the back of the head.

The man fell to the ground dead.

Quickly, Baz realized that it hadn't been the force of his blow that had killed him.

The already dead guard had been left there, posed like a doll to give someone a false sense of security.

OOOO

Seeing she had found the chain, he explained it for her. "It's for your own protection, darlin'. You're still weak and groggy. I couldn't let a delicate thing like you wander off on your own. We are _miles_ and _miles_ from the nearest town and these woods _aren't_ safe. You would never make it out on your own."

That didn't explain why he had the chains in the first place. Or why when Mr. Kaplan had thus far been too weak to even sit up unassisted the metal was scrapped in places - as if someone had been pulling on the chain trying quite desperately to break free.

Keeping a straight face, Mr. Kaplan nodded. Her voice was hoarse, but even, as she thanked him for his consideration. "That was very thoughtful of you."

She made no suggestion of him removing the chain now that he returned.

He made no offer.

 _tbc_

A/N Yes? No? Maybe so?


	2. Home From the Forest

A/N Fair warning – the whole story was written quick and dirty in two days. Could use some more editing and I would love, love, _love_ a beta for it but I know from experience that if I didn't at least start posting it before 4.5 aired I would never bother posting it.

Two separate time lines going on but it should be easy enough to follow.

 _The House You Live In_

 _Chapter 2_

Over the com, they heard …

"They're dead, Red. They're all dead. Every single one of them."

Thinking that was the all clear, Tom stopped fighting to hold Elizabeth back. They raced across the grounds and into the house.

 _OOO_

 _Jonestown._ That was Liz's first thought.

This was what it must have been like walking around after the Kool-aid.

Finding the room with Kirk in it, Liz put her hand to her mouth in horror. "Oh my God! Reddington, what did you do to him?!"

Unlike the others in the house who seemed to have gotten violently ill before dying, Kirk appeared to have just died violently.

Dembe defended Reddington. "We _found_ Kirk like this."

Looking around the room, seeing all the medical equipment scattered about – far more than she had seen before for his routine blood transfusions - it looked like the setting of a mad scientist movie.

The wounds to Kirk's throat added to the feeling that they were in a horror movie.

The little inhuman paw prints tracked around his body in blood narrowed the sub-genre to monster. Liz's best guess would have been werewolf.

Kirk appeared to have been running for the door.

"How long?" Reddington demanded.

Kneeling down next to Kirk, Baz shook his head. "Red, he's stone cold. Who ever did this has been gone for some time."

Liz just stared. Given the empty bag hanging on the IV pole, it looked like Kirk had been in the process of receiving another of his transfusions - only now all of that blood and all his own blood were pooled on the floor around him.

Dembe was the one to tell her. "When we got inside, Kirk and everyone else was already dead. By the looks of it, except for Kirk, it was some kind of poison."

Liz had already surmised as much.

"Not _everyone._ Not Agnes." Liz insisted. "Where is Agnes?! Where is my daughter?"

Reddington shook his head. "She isn't here."

"No! She has to be!" Rushing from room to room, stepping around bodies, Liz searched for her daughter. Tom and Reddington followed after her. Dembe followed after Reddington.

"Lizzie! Listen to me!"

Red tried to grab her, but Elizabeth tore free and up the stairs to keep trying doors.

"Lizzie stop! We already searched."

But she didn't stop - not until she found the nursery.

Seeing the empty crib, Liz lurched and had to grab onto the crib railings to stay standing up. "She's _not_ here!"

 _OOO_

"I'm sorry, Lizzie."

"You promised me!"

"I know." Red acknowledged. It broke his heart to have disappointed her again.

Dembe spotted it first in the otherwise empty crib. On their initial sweep of the room, his men had been focused on finding a baby. "Raymond ..."

Red just stared. It wasn't that he didn't immediately recognize them – he just couldn't bring himself to say it aloud as Lizzie did.

"Wait - those glasses … one of the lenses is broken, but _those_ are Mr. Kaplan's glasses."

Tom picked up on Dembe's expression. Liz did not.

"Why didn't you tell me that Mr. Kaplan was going in before us?" Lizzie sounded so relieved as she sighed. "Mr. Kaplan has Agnes."

Red shook his head. "That's not possible."

"Mr. Kaplan did this! She saved Agnes! You sent her to infiltrate Kirk's group! That's why you wouldn't answer me when I asked you where she was!"

" _No_ _Lizzie._ "

"Where is Mr. Kaplan? Where's the rendezvous point?" Liz asked.

"Mr. Kaplan does _not_ have Agnes."

"Yes, she _does!_ "

"No, Lizzie. She doesn't. Mr. Kaplan is dead."

"No! Mr. Kaplan _has_ my baby!"

"Mr. Kaplan is dead, Lizzie. _I_ shot Mr. Kaplan."

"No -" Elizabeth grabbed on to the front of his shirt. "No! She can't be! She -"

"- _Lizzie, Mr. Kaplan is gone. I killed her. I shot her at point blank range!"_

"No! _No!"_ Letting go of his shirt, Liz crumpled to the ground crying – whether for the poor woman whose only sin – at least in Red's eyes – had been helping her _or_ for her lost daughter, he couldn't say.

 _OOOO_

"You need to eat. We've got to get your strength back up."

Mr. Kaplan didn't ask for what.

 _tbc_

A/N Reviews are greatly appreciated.


	3. Too Many Clues In This Room

_The House You Live In_

 _Chapter 3 Too Many Clues in the Room_

Liz was still crumpled up on the floor, inconsolable, when Baz came in looking for his marching orders. "What do you want us to do about all the bodies? We didn't kill them. Do we just leave them?"

Reddington shook his head. "Get rid of them."

Baz stared questioningly at the glasses in Dembe's hands. "Mr. Kaplan isn't answering."

Dembe admitted. "Raymond, none of Mr. Kaplan's girls are."

Reddington's voice was dull as he answered. "Then get new girls."

Baz was still just standing there looking at the glasses.

Reddington tipped his head towards the door. "Baz."

Baz left.

"Kirk is dead. Mr. Kaplan is dead. So _who_ has Agnes?" Tom asked.

Shaking his head, Reddington admitted. "I don't know. Someone else who had it in for Kirk."

"Or someone _else_ who has it in for you." Tom suggested.

Reddington nodded. "It could be someone who wants to hurt me or it could be someone who knew I wanted Agnes and wants something from me. I don't know."

"Well try to think." Tom prompted him. "Because I would say leaving Mr. Kaplan's glasses makes for a pretty big clue."

Still staring at the glasses, Reddington just shook his head.

"What about Mr. Kaplan's family? Her friends?"

Reddington still offered nothing.

Tom continued to pepper him with questions. "Did Mr. Kaplan have children?"

"Mr. Kaplan was more of a hands off mother."

"But she has children?"

"No."

"No?" Tom repeated. "You can't be a hands off mother without being a mother so which is it?"

"She _had_ children."

"Had?" Tom repeated. "She _had_ children? But not anymore?"

From the floor, Liz asked. "Did you kill them too?"

Biting the side of his mouth, Reddington looked away without answering.

"Oh God!" Having caught the look on his face before he turned, Liz cringed. "You did, didn't you? Oh my God! You killed her children!"

Raymond gave a halfhearted shake of his head, but he didn't outright deny it.

Tom pushed him again. "Reddington, you've got to give me something! Leaving Mr. Kaplan's glasses in the crib had to mean something! I mean if it wasn't Mr. Kaplan _why_ would someone try to make it look like she was responsible? _Who_ would do that? _Who_ would try to frame a dead woman?"

Picking herself up off of the floor, Lizzie interrupted. "- I can't stay here. I need to go! Tom, take me home!"

Snapping out of his daze, Reddington agreed. "Tom, get her back to the warehouse. Dembe and I will finish up here."

"No -"

"- Tom, please!" Liz begged. "I need to get out of here!"

Looking frustrated and torn, at Liz's request, Tom finally relented.

Before they reached the door, Reddington stopped her by touching her arm. "Lizzie, I will get you answers."

Liz jerked her arm away and kept walking.

OoO

Getting into the car, Tom tried to reassure her. "Liz, we will -"

Done sniveling, Liz wasn't interested. "- Start driving. Take the left up ahead."

"That's not the way back to the warehouse."

"We're not going back to the warehouse."

" _Where_ are we going?"

Checking the rear view mirror, she told him. "First, you need to lose our escort. Then we are going to see Vanessa Cruz."

 _OOOOO_

She needed to figure him out.

There was something more than a little off about anyone - herself included - who would want to hide themselves away from the world. People who chose to live all by themselves in the middle of the woods usually had a reason. It was seldom a good one.

Leg irons weren't something you happened to have laying around. They weren't like a length of rope. They couldn't serve multiple purposes. Leg irons only had one use.

Kate tried to figure him out between bites of his gamey soup.

What was his dysfunction? Was he looking to act out some kind of wounded bird or damsel in distress fantasy? Or was he looking to play the Most Dangerous Game and needed his prey to be in top form? Was he just your run of the mill serial killer? Or worse - some kind of sadist?

She needed to figure him out - and quickly - so she knew what part to play.

 _tbc_

A/N If you are reading this on kindly review on ff so I know to keep cross-posting it here.


	4. I'll Prove My Love

A/N Same 'universe' as _Sundown_ & _Mr. Kaplan's Day Off._

 _I'll Prove My Love_

"Who is Vanessa Cruz?" Tom asked as he worked to pick the lock on the door.

"Vanessa Cruz was a blacklister Reddington put us on to, but she evaded arrest … with Reddington's help. Her specialty was framing people for crimes they didn't commit."

"So Cruz is on Reddington's payroll?"

"No. Not anymore." Raymond admitted as he and Dembe came up behind them. "Mr. Kaplan was the one that I sent to recruit Vanessa on my behalf."

Liz pointed out. "But working for you wasn't _all_ that Mr. Kaplan recruited her for."

Raymond nodded. "It was a little May/December but Mr. Kaplan always had a weakness for homicidal maniacs."

"And look where that got her."

Ignoring Lizzie's jab, Raymond continued. "They were on again off again, but when Mr. Kaplan dropped out of contact completely with Vanessa - "

"- Because you _killed_ her." Lizzie seemed to be in a mood to pick apart everything he said.

"Vanessa wasn't very happy with me."

Once inside the luxurious penthouse apartment, it only took a minute for them to sweep it to confirm that Vanessa wasn't there. That accomplished, Raymond directed them to begin a more detailed search.

"What are we looking for?"

"I don't know. But I do know Vanessa wanted me to know she did this." Raymond shook his head. "Or at least was a part of it. This was beyond Vanessa's capabilities."

Raymond indicated for Dembe to search the kitchen. "You and Tom check the office."

As Raymond himself headed for the stairs to the bedroom, Lizzie stopped him. _"You_ and Tom take the office. _I'll_ check the bedroom."

Raymond didn't argue. Not having trusted the task to anyone else – and unwilling to put it on Dembe - he had emptied out all of Mr. Kaplan's apartments personally. He had had his fill of going through other people's personal belongings.

"I don't know what I'm looking for – I don't even know what I'm looking _at._ " Tom admitted as he opened drawer after drawer of neatly labeled little vials of blood and saliva samples and poly bags full of carefully cataloged hairs and fibers.

"Mr. Kaplan always had an appreciation for a well organized mind."

"Is that what this is?"

Dembe soon joined them. He shook his head.

Raymond frowned. He hadn't heard any movement from upstairs in some time. "I'm going to check on Elizabeth."

Tom and Dembe followed on his heels.

Liz wasn't searching. She was just sitting on the bed. Her head was down. There was something in her hands.

"Lizzie? What did you find?"

"Mr. Kaplan had a drawer."

Raymond shuttered his eyes for the briefest of moments. He shouldn't have put that on Elizabeth.

"She kept a few changes of clothes here. A toothbrush." He reopened them to Lizzie holding up an empty eye glass case. "And an extra pair of glasses."

 _OOO_

Liz stood from the bed when they heard the downstairs door open. A woman's heels could be heard crossing the hardwood floors.

When Liz and the others went to look, Vanessa was downstairs. Calm as could be, she was fixing herself a drink. Agnes was nowhere to be seen.

Much to Dembe's displeasure, Reddington took the lead going down the stairs.

"Hello Raymond." Vanessa didn't look up to address him. "I'm pleased to see you found my invitation."

"It was a little hard to miss, Vanessa."

Reddington signaled the others to stay back by the stairs as he approached - his gun remaining holstered.

Liz watched as Reddington spoke and moved very slowly as if dealing with a skittish animal – or a very dangerous one. "Thank you, Vanessa, for rescuing Agnes."

Done stirring, Vanessa carefully poured out the drink into a martini glass before looking up to answer. "Don't thank me, Raymond. Thank Kate."

Reddington's eyebrows knit together and for a moment his face lost its impassiveness.

"After all, it was her plan. I just did a bit of the leg work."

"Vanessa, where is Agnes?"

"She's with Kate now."

Mr. Kaplan was dead. Was that Cruz's indirect way of saying … Liz gasped. As she started to move closer, with a hand, Reddington again tried to signal her to stop.

Reddington gave his head a slight shake. "I know you are angry with me, Vanessa, but I also know you wouldn't hurt Agnes. Mr. Kaplan loved that baby. She risked _everything_ for that baby. She betrayed _me_ for that baby."

"I didn't hurt her, Raymond. I told you. I left her with Kate."

"Vanessa, please. Kate would want Agnes back with her mother."

"I didn't invite you here to talk about what Kate wants, Raymond. Kate has what she wants. _I_ invited you here to get what _I_ want."

Clearly not understanding, Reddington shook his head. "I can't give you what you want, Vanessa. I don't have it. All I can say is that I deeply regret not having Kate to give to you."

"I know you don't have Kate, Raymond, but there is still something you can give me."

"Tell me what you want, Vanessa."

Back to work on her martini, Cruz speared an olive.

Liz found herself getting distracted by Cruz's movements. There was something off about the way she had stirred and poured her martini. The way she held herself, the way she moved her hands – only using the very tips of her fingers to touch anything - it was like she had a fresh manicure that wasn't yet dry and was afraid of smudging it.

"Where are my manners? Would you care for a drink, Raymond?"

Reddington shook his head. "I didn't come here for a drink, Vanessa."

"Maybe that isn't why you came, but _that_ is why _I_ invited you here."

As Cruz dropped the olive into the martini and started walking towards Reddington. Liz stared at the martini. Something wasn't right about it. Since when did olives fizz like that in a martini?

"Vanessa please! Just tell me what you want?"

"An eye for an eye, Raymond."

Dembe was quicker on the uptake. As Cruz tried to throw her drink in Reddington's face, Dembe knocked him out of the way. Liz too found herself pushed to the ground as Tom covered her with his body as best he could.

Looking up from the floor, seeing the liquid hit the leather sofa and began eating away at it's surface, Liz realized what was wrong with the martini. "She just tried to throw acid in your face!"

Dembe dropped his gun as he hissed in agony and rolling off Reddington, rushed to remove his jacket. He had spared Reddington and avoided the worse of it himself, but a few drops had spattered on his back. Underneath Tom, Liz couldn't do anything but watch.

The gun was between Vanessa and Reddington. Vanessa could have easily made a grab for it and she would have made it, but instead, as Reddington tried to pick himself up off the floor, Vanessa launched herself at him.

Still stunned, Liz watched as Tom struggled to pull Cruz off of Reddington.

Taking out a handkerchief, Reddington held it up to the right side of his face where Cruz had clawed at him like an animal.

Lizzie said it again. "She just tried to thrown acid in your face!"

"What can I say? Mr. Kaplan had a type. Happy and well adjusted, it was not."

Using Liz's handcuffs, Tom handcuffed Vanessa to a chair.

Reddington was already ushering Dembe up the stairs. "I need to get Dembe taken care of. Then I'll be back for you. Tom, watch her."

 _OOOO_

She was covered in dried blood from being shot. Caked in dirt and mud from dragging herself to the stream. Her hair on her right side was matted.

She was content to remain repellant for as long as possible. He had other plans.

"Let's get you cleaned up, little lady."

She shook her head, but turning down the blankets, he ignored her protests and lifted her to her feet. An arm around her waist, he marched her to the small washroom. The chain went with them.

Once inside, she looked around for a mirror but there wasn't one to be found.

She wasn't sure if she was disappointed or relieved.

"We'll get you scrubbed and changed. Then we'll get you fed and back in bed."

He stood behind her as he undressed her. Her suit jacket was long gone. He fumbled with the scarf at her neck, but he made quick work of the zipper on her skirt.

She still wasn't exactly clear what kind of deviant she was dealing with – if he was just paranoid and delusional, your garden variety serial killer or a sadist - but she wasn't going to give him any encouragement if he was the latter.

She was determined not to show him any signs of fear or pain, but her mind and her body had differing ideas. She stiffened as he began undoing the buttons on her blouse.

Her blood had dried her blouse to the right side of her body like a second skin. He warned her. "This is going to sting a bit."

Getting the blouse off was like pulling off a bandaid – but one that covered one whole side of her body. As he removed it, her legs gave out and her mouth opened involuntarily, but she managed to hold in her scream.

Catching her and holding her up, he sounded impressed. "Now I _know_ that had to have hurt. Don't hold it in on my account, little darling."

Down to her slip, as the hand not holding her up began easing one of the straps down her shoulder, she shuddered.

The hand paused a moment before dragging the strap back up.

"Why don't we leave that for now. Let the water uncrust the blood."

A hand pump that provided water straight from the ground was what passed for running water.

As he put her into the already filled tub and lowered her down into the cold, cold water, she gasped and blacked out again.

 _tbc_

A/N If you are reading this on kindly review on ff so I know to keep cross-posting it here.


	5. I'm Not Sayin'

A/N I stopped posting this one months ago because no one seemed to be reading it. I got a request to post a few more chapters so I'll try it again. Most of the story was written in 2 days, but I did just go back to 'clean up' the previous chapters.

I realize Vanessa/Mr. Kaplan may not be everybody or anybody's cup of tea, but pre _The Harem_ , Cruz was the only character besides Mr. Kaplan that I can recall having any inkling towards being a lesbian or bi-sexual and I really, really didn't want to use an OC. For what it's worth she disappears for most of the rest of the fic.

 _I'm Not Sayin'_

It was already too late to prevent the worst of the damage, still Raymond put Dembe under the water to dilute what was left of the acid. Thankfully, the furniture had taken the brunt of the liquid.

Once he had Dembe in the shower, Reddington pulled out his phone.

"Brimley! I am in need of your services. It's a matter of some urgency."

"No can do, Red. I'm retired."

" _Retired?_ Since when?"

"Since I'm an old man, Raymond. I'm an old man and I'm not well."

"You're only as old as you f -"

Brimley interrupted. "- You missed my wedding."

Raymond was slightly thrown by the sudden change of topic. Recovering, he apologized. "I know and I'm sorry. I hope you liked the gift that I sent. I know you've been looking for an inverted Jenny for a -"

Brimley cut him off again. "- Mr. Kaplan missed the wedding too. That's not like Kate."

Raymond did what he did of late whenever the topic turned to Mr. Kaplan. He shut down.

The silence didn't drag on for long before Brimley filled it. "Don't call me again, Raymond."

 _OOOOOOOO_

Liz wasn't waiting for Reddington to come back to start asking questions. _"Do you have my baby?"_

She wasn't really expecting Cruz to cooperate – not without _persuading_ \- but surprisingly, she did.

"No. I don't have Agnes. Kate took her."

Liz wasn't sure what to think about Vanessa. One minute she acted as if she knew what Reddington had done to Mr. Kaplan – why else would she have tried to kill him - but the next she talked as if she thought that Mr. Kaplan was alive.

Then again, people who threw acid tended to not be the most stable, well adjusted of individuals. Rather than put strain on Cruz's seemingly tenuous grasp on reality, Liz focused on getting whatever answers she could out of the other woman who if nothing else, had almost certainly been at Kirk's safe house.

Tom asked. "Who left Mr. Kaplan's glasses in the crib?"

Cruz didn't answer Tom, but when Liz stated it as a fact ... "Youwere the one that left Mr. Kaplan's glasses in the crib."

… Cruz didn't deny it. "I am."

 _"Why?"_

"Because I wanted Raymond Reddington to know who was responsible. Who it was that was still cleaning up his messes. _And_ because _I_ wanted him to come here looking for _me_ so _I_ could give him what he has coming to him."

Cruz said it so vehemently. _"An eye for an eye."_

Not wanting to talk or even think about Reddington, Liz asked again. "You didn't take my baby?"

"No. I've never even laid eyes on your baby. I never went past the kitchens before tonight. When I left the glasses in the crib – that was the only time I have ever been in the nursery."

Maybe, Liz realized, she was the crazy one because she couldn't stop asking the same questions over and over again hoping for a different answer. "You never saw my baby?"

"No."

Tom asked her. "What were you doing at Kirk's safe house?"

Vanessa said nothing. It was a good question. Liz repeated it. "Why did you infiltrate Kirk's compound?"

"Because Kate called me to ask for my help with her plan to get you and Agnes back."

Liz locked eyes with Tom.

"What plan?" Tom asked.

But Liz hadn't gotten that far. She was momentarily stymied by the idea that Mr. Kaplan had called Vanessa. "You _talked_ to Mr. Kaplan?"

"Yes."

"When? _When_ did she call you with her plan?"

"She called me from Texas. From Amarillo _."_

Liz would have been disappointed by the brief moment of hope if she still believed in hope.

Tom interrupted Vanessa to accuse her of lying. "She couldn't have. Reddington took away her phone. She already didn't have it when I caught up with them in Cuba."

"She called me from her friend Nikos' office."

Liz saw the realization dawn on Tom's face before he chimed in. "Reddington left her alone for a few minutes in Little Nikos' office to clean up Mato."

Nikos? Liz didn't know any Nikos. She put him aside for now and instead asked. "What was Mr. Kaplan's plan and how did you find Kirk's safe house?"

"Kate knows a great many people. Nikos wasn't the only one of her friends that Reddington didn't know. She reached out to some Russians. People from the old days. People who owed her favors. People who didn't like Kirk. She asked for a list to be sent of real estate owned or leased by Kirk and his shell companies all over the world."

Liz said it out loud. "Possible safe houses. I don't understand. That list had to be long. How did Mr. Kaplan know Kirk would go there? To that particular location?"

"She didn't. It wasn't just me. Kate sent out all of her girls to try to find you and your baby."

Tom pointed out. "That's why none of them are around to step in and take over cleaning for Reddington."

"Kate couldn't go herself. Kirk knew her. They had history. He would have recognized her immediately. When she called, she told me she was short on time so she was going to have the list sent to _me_ to distribute. She gave me numbers for a few of the girls who worked for her. When the list arrived I was to split it and send part to each of them. She said they would know what to do. Her girls would take it from there."

Tom questioned Vanessa. "What kind of history did Mr. Kaplan have with Kirk? And why not just have the list sent to Reddington?"

Vanessa didn't answer. "I couldn't just do nothing. I knew how important finding the two of you was to Kate. I picked a place off the list for myself."

Tom asked good questions. Liz asked a different one. "How long had you been working there?"

"I've been there for months waiting for Kirk and Agnes to arrive."

Liz didn't understand. "Why would you stay there if you got in and Kirk wasn't there?"

"It didn't matter if Kirk was there or not. It was better if he wasn't – easier to get in and then just wait. Reddington is a battering ram. Kate preferred to work things from behind the scenes. She knew that Reddington would flush Kirk out of his hideouts one by one until eventually, Kirk would find his way to one of the safe houses where she had her people. Her Trojan horse would already be inside waiting."

"What was Kirk doing back here? So close to D.C.?"

"He could have been planning to make another play for you, Liz."

Tom offered one theory, but Vanessa had another.

"He was suppose to be meeting with some new doctor. I overhead Kirk's people saying that this doctor refused to travel out of the country to see Kirk the way Kirk's other doctors did. Kirk came here to try to meet with him."

Tom wasn't buying it. He shook his head. "She was only alone in that office for five, _maybe_ ten minutes. There's no way she could have organized all that in just a few minutes."

Liz believed it. "I think you are forgetting, this is Mr. Kaplan we are talking about."

Liz asked. "What was the plan once Kirk arrived?"

"If any of us got in we were to go dark until Kirk arrived with you and Agnes. Once that happened, we were to signal her and only her. Not Reddington."

"Why not Reddington?" Liz asked.

Ever the pessimist Tom made a conjecture. "She needed leverage. Mr. Kaplan was trying to save her own skin. She knew what Reddington was going to do with her. She must have thought she could get back into his good graces by retrieving Agnes on her own."

Scowling at Tom, Vanessa disagreed. "I don't think Kate planned to give Agnes back to him. After what Raymond and your husband did to her friend Nikos, Kate felt that Raymond had lost his way."

Liz looked at Tom warily. "Who is or was Nikos?"

"He knew where Agnes was. Well -" Looking more caught than contrite, Tom admitted. " - not where she was but he knew how to contact the man who took Agnes on Kirk's orders."

Vanessa argued. "He was Kate's friend. She could have gotten the information from him."

"Reddington gave her a chance. Little Nikos wouldn't tell her how to reach Mato."

Liz took a not so wild guess. "Reddington gave Mr. Kaplan a chance? How long of a chance? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Two minutes?"

"He let her ask." Tom admitted.

Liz grimaced. "So _no_ minutes. And then what did Reddington do to him?" Seeing the way Tom looked down and taking into account Vanessa's accusation of Tom's involvement, Liz amended her question. "And then what did _you_ do to him?"

"Liz ... I just used what was on hand."

Dreading the answer, Liz asked. "Whatwas on hand?"

Liz had to repeat the question before Tom would answer. " _What was on hand?_ "

"A surgical drill and a cauterizer."

"Where were you that a surgical drill was what was on hand? Were you at a hospital?"

"It was more of a stand alone clinic."

"Was Mr. Kaplan's friend Nikos a doctor?"

For the briefest of moments, Liz thought of her own doctor friend, Nick, and what Reddington might have done to him for his part in their charade, but not having the fortitude to think about that at the moment, she simply pushed the thought away.

"No."

"He was a patient?"

"His surgery … it was elective. Look Liz -"

Liz held up a hand to stop him. "Was this Nikos involved with Kirk or the kidnapping in any way?"

"No, but -" Tom looked sorry, but only sorry that she was finding out about it, not sorry for what he had done. " - Liz, he knew how to find the man who knew how to find the man who had our daughter!"

"So Reddington had you _torture_ Mr. Kaplan's friend. Did he make her watch?"

Tom hesitated only a fraction of a second before assuring her. "No Liz. He didn't."

Something about his slight hesitation made her press him on the matter. "No?"

Tom insisted. "He took her out of the room with him."

"We agreed, no more lies, Tom. That was the deal." Liz stared at him waiting.

Tom admitted. "He kept her with him in the waiting room."

Liz cringed. "So she could hear."

"Yes." Tom admitted.

"Reddington made her listen as you tortured her friend with a surgical drill and then cauterized the wounds so you could do it some more." Liz was so far beyond being just horrified. "Did you kill him?"

Again Tom answered unconvincingly. "Little Nikos was alive when I left the room … and Reddington followed Mr. Kaplan back in."

When she covered her face with her hands, his voice desperate, Tom pleaded with her.

"Liz, I'm telling you - that's all I know."

Pulling herself together, Liz asked Vanessa. "What happened tonight?"

"I worked in the kitchens. Once Kirk arrived at my safe house I gave the signal. Kate had already told me what poison to use. It was easier because you weren't there. It was just Agnes to work around. I put it in the food in the evening meal and then I left as usual so as not to arouse suspicion– just like Kate told me to."

"What about Agnes? What about my baby?"

"There was no danger for your baby. Agnes was too young to eat solid foods so there was no fear of her getting any of the poison."

Liz tried again hoping for a different answer. "No, I mean where did you take my baby?"

"I left the baby. The poison had to have a delayed reaction to make sure everyone would eat it. My routine was that I always left right after cleaning the kitchen at the end of the night. It would have looked suspicious if I tried to stay. The plan was for me to give the signal and she would come for the baby. "

Liz looked at Tom in horror. The flaw in that plan being that Mr. Kaplan was dead. She wasn't there to get Cruz's signal. She wasn't there to rescue Agnes.

Tom shook his head. "No. This is bullshit, Liz! This is ridiculous. It's got to be a trick! She has our baby! Think about it, Liz! Why else would she be here? Why else would she be pretending to answer our questions?"

Vanessa set him straight. "I'm answering Elizabeth's questions. Not yours and certainly not Reddington's."

Vanessa turned back to Elizabeth. "You are not my enemy. Reddington is. Kate just wanted to help you and your daughter. Everything Kate ever did was to protect you. She wouldn't want you to worry. Agnes is fine."

Liz tried to keep it together. Agnes wasn't in the house with all the bodies when they arrived which meant that someone had to have taken her.

"Someone else had to have been in that house. Someone who didn't like what was on the menu that night or arrived after dinner."

"Or someone who knew not to eat the food." Tom suggested.

Liz latched on to that idea. "Mr. Kaplan's other girls, the ones who worked for her -" Liz clarified lest Vanessa get offended. "- who were they? Were any of them at the house with you?"

She needed to figure out who else could have stepped in and taken Agnes in Mr. Kaplan's place.

"Even if they were there I wouldn't know. Kate gave me a few numbers to call and they took it from there. It was a call tree. I never met with them and I could hardly have gone up to the other women who worked there and asked if they were there on Kate's behalf."

"We're going to need those phone numbers." Tom told her.

Liz found herself getting frustrated. "You left, but you went back to the house. You would have had to to put the glasses in Agnes' crib. Did you see anything or anyone then?"

"I am telling you, there is nothing to worry about. Kate has your baby."

Vanessa's hands were handcuffed together with the short chain looped through the arm of the chair to severely limit her range of motion. Laying one of her hands atop Vanessa's, Liz tried to ease Vanessa into the harsh reality. "Vanessa, Mr. Kaplan can't be the one to have taken Agnes. Reddington has admitted that he killed her for betraying him."

Vanessa refused to accept it. "Kate's not dead."

Vanessa knew that Mr. Kaplan was dead. She had to. That was why she had come after Reddington.

"Vanessa, Mr. Kaplan called you from Amarillo. Has she called you since then?"

Vanessa smiled at her reassuringly. "No, but she didn't need to. She -

Hearing the water stop upstairs, they both froze.

Elizabeth made a decision. She uncuffed Cruz from the chair. "Go. Now!"

Tom grabbed Vanessa by the shoulders to stop her.

"Liz, what the hell are you doing?"

"Reddington, he's going to kill her."

"In all fairness, Liz, she _did_ just try to throw acid in his face!"

When that didn't sway her, Tom tried a different angle. "Liz, you can't just let her go. She has information about our daughter."

"She gave us information about our daughter."

"Even if you believe her – which I don't - she might have more!"

"I know, but ..." So many things didn't add up. Liz wanted to go over Vanessa's story again. She knew she was missing something. She needed more time, but she knew she didn't have it. "... he is going to kill her – just like he killed Mr. Kaplan! Just like he killed her children!"

"Liz, you are jumping to conclusions. Reddington never actually admitted to -"

Tom didn't get to finish. Cruz elbowed him in the ribs, turned to knee him in the crotch and then for good measure broke a vase over his head before running for the door.

Hearing the commotion, Reddington and a shirtless Dembe came rushing down the stairs guns drawn. "What was that?"

Seeing no Vanessa and the empty handcuffs in Liz's hands, Reddington asked. " _Lizzie, what did you do?"_

"What did _you_ do?" Liz countered. "What did you do?"

"Please tell me you did not just let the homicidal maniac holding your daughter go free?"

Despite his own injuries, Dembe was the one to help Tom off the floor as Elizabeth faced off with Reddington. "Vanessa said that she didn't have Agnes."

Reddington looked stunned. "And you believed her?"

"Yes." Liz answered honestly. "I do."

"So you let her _go?_ " Reddington quickly went from stunned to outraged. "Do you actually even want to find your daughter? Because you just let the best lead we had walk out the door! Of course Cruz has Agnes!"

Clearly trying to rein in his anger, Reddington tried again. "What did Vanessa tell you?"

Tom answered. "You killed the golden goose before you got all the eggs."

While gingerly touching the spot on his head where Vanessa had hit him, Tom summarized the latest complication in the search for their daughter. "According to Vanessa, Mr. Kaplan had a plan to rescue Agnes. Part of that plan involved Vanessa poisoning everybody and leaving Agnes at Kirk's safe house for Mr. Kaplan to retrieve. Only what Vanessa _didn't_ know was that you killed Mr. Kaplan so she never got the message to swing on through and pick up our daughter."

Liz thought about what Tom had done to Mr. Kaplan's friend Nikos. She thought of the things she had idly stood by and let Reddington's friend Brimley do. One of the missing pieces clicked.

"What did you do to her? To Mr. Kaplan? You shot her, but what else did you do to her? Did you think that she had more information? That she was holding out on you? Did you have Tom or Brimley try to get it out of her?"

Missing the forest for the trees, Reddington shook his head. "Brimley would never hurt Kate."

Liz had once thought that of Reddington.

"Then one of your _other_ buddies! What did you do to Mr. Kaplan?!" Liz insisted. "I want to know what happened! I want to know _exactly_ what you did to Mr. Kaplan!"

"You want to know what happened to Mr. Kaplan?!" Having had enough, Reddington shouted back at her. "I brought her out into the woods! To the middle of nowhere! She knew exactly what we were there for, but she didn't beg or plead. She didn't try to run and she _certainly_ didn't apologize. She was _defiant_. She was Mr. Kaplan _to the very end._ She looked me straight in the eye as I told her I was putting her out to pasture! I was retiring her! And then I pulled out a gun and I shot her! She spun around in a pirouette like a little -"

Reddington's voice broke and he stopped.

No one else said a word. Liz and the others just stared at him in appalled silence.

Solemnly, sounding like his heart was breaking, Reddington finished. "She spun around like a little ballerina and then she hit the ground. And I walked away." Reddington's brow furrowed. "I walked away. I left her there. Face down in the grass. For all of eternity."

Sitting down in the chair Cruz had just vacated, Reddington put his head in his hands.

Liz felt like she was going to be sick.

OOO

She woke to the warmth of a roaring fire and the weight of an extra blanket. She wasn't in the bed. She had been left in a chair by the fire.

Her hose and slip were gone. Feeling around under the blanket, she found she was again wearing a blouse and a skirt but they weren't her own. The material felt cheap and synthetic.

Mentally, she did an inventory. She was still sore in all the same places – no less, no more. Reaching up to touch her face, she could tell that the bandage was new. Her hair had been washed and the tangles combed out.

"You gave me a little scare there, darling."

Startled, she turned her head to find him looming over her.

"I'm a country mouse. I wasn't thinking. A little city mouse like you, I should have heated the water for you. I'm sorry. Now let's get you fed and back in bed."

 _tbc_

A/N So this story went au after 4.7 or so. As happy as I was for Mr. Kaplan that her captor did not turn out to be an axe murderer, I still maintain that there is no other valid reason to own leg irons.

If there is interest in reading the rest and the sequel I will keep posting them. If not I'll go back to other stuff.


	6. Too Much to Lose

_Chapter 6_

Finished with his confession of murdering Mr. Kaplan, Reddington had collapsed into the chair. He just sat there holding his head in his hands.

As much as she wanted to turn her back on him and never set eyes on him again, Liz knew that Reddington was her best – possibly only chance of ever seeing her daughter again.

Liz brought herself down to his level. Fighting back her revulsion, she reached out to touch his hand to get his attention.

He lifted his head so his eyes could meet hers.

"Mr. Kaplan had a plan. Did she tell you her plan of how to get Agnes back? How to get me back from Kirk?"

The shaking of his head said no, but his expression said something else.

"Think." Liz urged him. "This is very important. Did she tell you _anything_ about how she thought you should go about finding us?"

Again, he gave the same response.

Dembe prompted him. "You two were sitting at the table. What did she say that made you tell her it would be best for her to wait outside?"

Reddington shook his head. "I don't know."

"Think Raymond."

"Mr. Kaplan _tried_ to tell me something, but I couldn't hear her."

Liz didn't understand. "What do you mean you couldn't hear her?"

"There was this noise. Every time I looked at Kate … every time she talked ... it was so hard to hear anything over that noise."

"What noise?" Liz asked.

"In my head." Reddington admitted. "This wasn't the first time that Mr Kaplan took you away from me."

Liz looked to Dembe, but he shook his head just as clueless as she was.

"When you were just a few months old, your mother brought you to D.C. for a few weeks to visit your grandparents. Katarina told everyone that she was going to lunch with some girlfriends. Your grandmother wanted to keep you while she went, but Katarina said that her friends would want to see you so she had to bring you along.

"Instead, she showed up on my doorstep. She had told them a tale of friends to visit, she told me a tale of you being colicky and her having to walk with you all night so you wouldn't wake your sick grandmother up.

"Your mother asked me if I could look after you for a few hours while she slept. It became our routine for those few weeks and for her later visits to D.C.

"She would show up on my doorstep, tell me her lunch order, hand you over with your diaper bag and the key's to Kate's car and then she would hide herself away in my bedroom to rest.

"All Katarina's talk of colic, but you never cried while I was watching you. I thought I had the magic touch."

Liz didn't know where Reddington was going with his meandering story or where his _wife_ happened to be in all this, but she couldn't stop herself from interrupting. "The keys to Kate's car? To Mr. Kaplan's car? Why would my mother have the keys to Mr. Kaplan's car? Did Mr. Kaplan know my mother?"

Reddington said it like it was the most obvious thing. "Kate's car was the one with your car seat in it so Katarina borrowed it."

Liz was so confused. "Why was my car seat in Mr. Kaplan's car?"

"Kate -" Reddington cleared his throat. "Mr. Kaplan, she took your grandmother to the airport to pick you and your mother up. You have to understand that car seats were this new _alien_ invention to their generation. No one wanted to move it from car to car. Your grandfather, he would have bought a car seat for you for every car in the city, but Mr. Kaplan was always more sensible than either of your grandparents. Kate could drive any car. It was just easier to let your mother or whoever had you drive Kate's Cadillac and Kate would drive your grandmother's Mercedes."

Somehow, the idea that she had had grandparents had never occurred to her. "Mr. Kaplan knew my grandparents?"

Liz was completely derailing his story. Reddington wasn't taking it well. He was back to looking down at his hands. "Mr. Kaplan was ..." Reddington paused before settling on the words "... an associate of … both of your grandparents."

Liz translated that easily enough to they were all criminals together.

Now that she knew that she had had grandparents, she was a little hurt by what she perceived as her grandfather's lack of interest in her. "Why did Mr. Kaplan have to take my grandmother to the airport? Why didn't my grandfather drive my grandmother to the airport? Didn't he want to see me?"

"Very much so, but your grandmother was a petty woman. She didn't want him to get to hold you before she did. She wanted to get to spend a little bit of time with you and your mother before he did. Like Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters, she waited until it was time to go to the ball and then she told your grandfather he couldn't go. He had to stay at her house and assemble the crib she had ordered for you or you wouldn't have a place to sleep that night. Katarina said he was standing in the driveway of your grandmother's house eagerly waiting when they pulled in."

A small detail caught Liz's attention. "Her house? They weren't married anymore?"

"Your grandparents were never married … well not to each other."

Elizabeth couldn't keep the bitterness out of her tone. "My mother was the product of some illicit affair."

"No. Nothing as sordid as that. Your grandfather wasn't even married at the time your mother was born."

Darkly, Elizabeth persisted. "So she was an accident – like I was. Like Agnes was."

"No." Reddington swung his head. "Your mother was very much wanted. Very much intended.

"Your grandmother desperately wanted a baby, but she was having trouble getting pregnant. They say it takes a village to raise a child. Sometimes it takes more than two people to have a child. Your grandfather cared very much for your grandmother and her happiness. He agreed to help get your grandmother a child. Afterward, he stayed a part of your mother's life. It was all very civilized … for the most part. There was never any real animosity, but there was sometimes a bit of a disagreement about who should get to do things like drop off or pick up your mother at the airport or be the first to get to take her to the zoo to see the new pandas from China."

"What was my mother's maiden name?"

Reddington didn't answer.

He went back to his story. "Your mother had once again sent me _all_ the way across town to get lunch. It was a mild day. Not hot. Not cold. You were sleeping so peacefully. You weren't in one of those bucket seats. You had been up the whole night fussing – or so your mother said. I knew it was too early, but she swore you had to be teething already. I didn't want to disturb you by taking you out. So I rolled up all the windows. I locked the doors and I left you there in the car while I went inside to pick up the food.

"There were two people in line in front of me at the hostess stand, but I could see the order with my name on it siting on the shelf behind her. I went around the counter and I grabbed it. Before the hostess or the people in line in front of me could start to complain I pulled off the ticket. I handed her two twenties for a $24.79 bill and I walked back out.

"I came out of the restaurant and the car was gone.

"You were gone.

"I had lost you.

"I knew exactly where I had parked the car and all I could do was look at that one spot.

"I was literally gone for less than two minutes. There was no broken glass. I still had the keys. I just stood there staring. I couldn't comprehend how you could possibly be gone in an instant.

"I dropped the keys and the bag with the lunch in it and I just stood there _frozen_ staring at that empty parking space.

"A woman stopped to pick them up for me. She asked me if everything was all right. I told her no. Nothing was all right. I told her the car was gone and I had left you sleeping in it.

"She looked at the keys and saw the Cadillac emblem. She asked me what color the car was and if I could recall the plate number so she could call the police for me.

"I told her.

"She laughed at me. She congratulated me on my new baby but told me I needed to get more sleep if I couldn't even remember where I parked.

"She turned me a little to the right and she pointed. The car was there with you and Kate in the backseat.

"Mr. Kaplan wanted to teach me a lesson, but ..." Reddington shook his head. "I don't believe she intended to frighten me to the extent that she did. She only moved the car a few spots to the right. I'm sure she thought I would come out of the restaurant _not_ see the car and after a half second of panic look left and then look right and immediately spot her car ...

"But I didn't.

"I got into the backseat with the two of you. Kate was livid with me. She started listing off all of the things that could have happened to you. She was in the right." Reddington looked pained as he admitted. "Kate was always in the right.

"Mr. Kaplan kept talking. She was trying to impart some great wisdom to me, but I couldn't hear it.

"I couldn't hear anything. All I could hear was my anger.

"It was like the ocean drowning out everything else. White noise, only it wasn't white. It was dark. And it was only in my head.

"Kate thought _I_ was the troublemaker. That _I_ was a bad influence on Katarina. As far as she was concerned, Katarina could do no wrong. She didn't believe me when I said that your mother was the instigator. You want to believe the best of the people you care about. You never want to suspect them of being duplicitous.

"Disappearing for a few hours in the middle of the day every day for weeks – I had to make up the work somehow. It wasn't allowed, but I started bringing documents home to work on in the evening so I wouldn't fall behind. Classified papers.

"I thought Katarina came to see me because she wanted to see me. I thought she brought you with her because she wanted me to know you."

Reddington shook his head. "I was a patsy and you, you were a prop. She would send me out to get us lunch while she took a nap. She would always pick the most particular thing - a salad from Sans Souci or crab cakes from Duke's and I would spend half an hour fighting the midday traffic to get there and another half an hour to get back. I just thought she was being her mother's daughter - pampered and spoiled. Accustomed to her any and every whim being fulfilled. I never suspected she was doing it so she could go through all my classified government papers."

Liz was horrified. She didn't understand. "Why are you telling me this? _Now_?"

Reddington raised his head finally meeting her gaze. "Because I don't think you have ever reminded me of her as much as you do right now – trying to use me to get what you want."

Liz pulled back her hand as if it had been scalded.

 _OOO_

As Liz ended her call with Harold Cooper, Tom asked her. "Are you sure that that was a good idea? Giving him the location of Kirk's safe house? For all we know, Reddington could still have people there cleaning the place."

Back in their fishbowl facade of a home, an angry Liz turned on him. "That would be kind of hard to do without any kind of cleaning crew."

Tom raised both hands in surrender, but Liz kept going. "You know Reddington! You know what he is like!"

"Yes." Tom admitted knowing where this was going.

"At no point did you think to speak up on Mr. Kaplan's behalf? To tell Reddington that this was what we wanted? What _I_ wanted? To warn him that Mr. Kaplan was off limits for this?!"

"I tried, Liz."

 _"Not hard enough!"_

"Come on, Liz! That's not fair!."

"That's not fair?! That's not fair? What's not fair is that Mr. Kaplan tried to help us and you just stood by and did nothing to save her!"

"You weren't there, Liz. I was on thin ice myself. We aren't all you, Liz! We don't all get unlimited free passes from Raymond Reddington!"

"He killed Mr. Kaplan!"

It was the wrong thing to do and the wrong time to do it, but Tom hit back. "What did _you_ think would happen, Liz? If things went south what did _you_ think Reddington would do? Wag his finger at her and say don't do that again? You're naive, but even _you_ aren't _that_ naive!"

Tom pointed out to Liz. "This whole thing was Mr. Kaplan's idea. You know, as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Kaplan got herself killed!"

He knew he was going too far even before he finished saying it, but the look on Liz's face when he was done left no doubt.

She couldn't even stand to look at him. "You know, for the longest time, Tom, I thought that Raymond Reddington was the toxic one in my life. The one causing _everything_ to go wrong." With such despair on her face, Liz asked him. "But what if he's not the only one? I need you out of my life, Tom."

"Liz no!"

"Please go, Tom. I can't have you here anymore."

The fight gone out of him, Tom tried to apologize. "Liz -"

"You need to go, Tom."

"Liz, just wait. Liz -"

But having heard the raised voices and the magic words 'Tom' and 'go' Baz and the other guard of moment weren't having any of it. "You heard the lady."

Tom raised his hands in the hopes that they would lower their weapons and give him a little time to reason with Liz. "Don't push me away, Liz. Please."

"Mr. Kaplan is dead, Tom. Because of us! I can't do this anymore, Tom. I can't have you in my life anymore. Unless our daughter comes back into our lives … I just can't do it. I want, I need you out of my life."

As Baz used the nose of his gun to prod him toward the door, Tom promised her. "Until … _until_ our daughter comes back, Liz _._ Not unless - _until._ "

 _OOO_

Using the distraction of Tom being thrown out of the front entrance, Liz went to the back door and ordered the guards there. "Go help Baz. I want Tom out of here.

As they left – no doubt eager to help get rid of a person they knew to be a thorn in Reddington's side, she cautioned them. " _Don't_ hurt him, but get him out of here."

 _OOO_

Only mostly confident of the reception she would get, Liz knocked at the door hesitantly.

"I couldn't stand being in that warehouse anymore and I didn't know where else to go." Liz admitted.

Donald looked at her and then past her into the hallway. "Does Reddington know that you are here?"

"No. I escaped while his goons were distracted."

"Come on in. I was just watching television."

Liz entered enough so that the door could be closed and then hung back as Donald hurried to tidy up some of the bachelor clutter.

"What were you watching?"

"Oh ..." Ressler froze. " … Nothing."

From where she was standing, Liz couldn't see what was on the tv screen but watching Donald pick up the remote and frantically hit buttons to try to turn the screen off, Liz was suddenly horrified as she wondered what he had been watching that he was so desperate for her to _not_ see.

Seeing her expression, Ressler caught on. "Oh. No. No!"

Apparently deciding the truth was less embarrassing than what she was imagining he confessed. "I was watching the last season of Downton Abbey."

"You were watching Downton Abbey?"

"What can I say? I'm a big fan. That Dowager Countess is pretty bad ass."

Liz smiled. "Well you can't be that big of a fan if you are only getting to the last season now."

"It's a rewatch."

Liz couldn't help it. She started to laugh … And then she started to cry.

"Hey!" Moving closer, Donald wrapped his arms around her. After leading her to the couch, he asked. "What happened?"

"Reddington killed Mr. Kaplan for trying to help me get away from him. Kirk doesn't have Agnes anymore. Kirk is dead."

"Who has Agnes?"

"I don't know." Was all Liz managed to get out before burying her face in his shoulder to cry.

OOO

The clothing she had arrived in was stained with her dried blood. The clothes he had changed her into were women's but they weren't new with tags.

She should have felt cleaner out of her soiled garments, but she didn't.

Some of the new-to-her clothes, she could still smell the faintest traces of perfume from the former owner – or more likely owners. Most women who wore perfume had a single, signature scent that they wore. They didn't usually vary their perfume. Her new black skirt and pink blouse might not have clashed in color, but they didn't match in scent.

 _tbc_

A/N Standard if you are reading kindly take a moment and share your thoughts so far.


	7. Rainy Day People

_Chapter 7_

Ressler opened the door, but only part of the way. He put his foot behind the door to brace it so it couldn't be easily pushed open further. "What do you want, Reddington?"

"I know Lizzie is here."

"What did you do? Implant a tracker in her?"

"No." Reddington admitted. "I took a chance. Lizzie doesn't have very many friends. I bluffed and you just confirmed it."

"Maybe she'd have more friends if you stopped shooting them."

Reddington almost looked pained at the barb but Donald wasn't buying it. "What kind of a man shoots a seventy something year old lady – an _unarmed_ seventy something year old lady?"

"Not a good man." Reddington admitted before changing the subject. "Now are you going to send Lizzie out or are we coming in to get her?"

"She just finally cried herself to sleep – and by the looks of her it's the first sleep she's gotten in weeks. I'm not waking her up!"

"Donald, I'm not leaving Lizzie here. It's not safe."

"Keen is safer here with me than she is with you."

"Donald, I am through arguing with you and I am not leaving Lizzie here unprotected."

Reaching into a bowl by the door, Donald grabbed a set of keys and threw them to Reddington. "Across the hall."

Before closing the door in Reddington's face, Donald ordered him. "Feed the fish."

OOO

"Is he gone?"

Donald nodded.

"Thank you."

"Believe me, getting rid of Reddington was my pleasure. I should get you something to sleep in."

Not ready for him to leave yet – not even for the next room, Liz reached out and grabbed his hand to stop him. "Not just for that. For everything. For listening to the whole story about Reddington and Mr Kaplan and Vanessa. For not being angry – or at least not as angry as everyone else with me."

Sitting back down, he stroked her arm. "Hey, it's better than the alternative. Besides, it's not exactly like it's the first time Mr. Kaplan faked your death."

She put her head back on his shoulder where it had been before Reddington's interruption. "Yes, but at least that time the whole team was in on it."

He didn't say anything and Liz caught it. Picking up her head, she turned to look at him. "What?"

He admitted. "I was on Capitol Hill testifying. They couldn't get a message to me before the story broke."

Lizzie was horrified. "Oh Donald!"

"Hey, it's like I already said -" Ressler's expression froze.

"What?" Liz asked again.

Ressler's brow creased. "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

Liz stared at him, not following.

"This is going to sound crazy, but hear me out. Kirk is dead. Agnes is missing. Cruz claims she didn't take Agnes and you said you believed her. Cruz also said Mr. Kaplan has Agnes but Reddington says that's not possible because he killed Mr. Kaplan."

Liz nodded. "Where are you going with this?"

"What if _everyone_ is telling the truth or what they _think_ to be the truth?"

Donald moistened his lips. "Mr. Kaplan seems pretty good at faking people's deaths. She knows what Reddington is like. She knew what was coming." Donald paused before suggesting. "Could Mr. Kaplan have done something to Reddington's gun? Altered it somehow? I don't know, put blanks in it?"

Liz was skeptical. "You really think Mr. Kaplan faked her own death?"

"What's good for the goose is good for the gander, right?"

Donald raised a finger and threw out another idea. "Or maybe Reddington tried and something went wrong - somehow, she survived. Maybe Reddington missed the shot – I've got a scar on my leg from our run in with Anslo Garrick that says Reddington isn't the crack shot that he thinks he is."

Donald pointed something else out. "You said that before Vanessa threw the acid at him she said an eye for an eye."

"Yes." Liz agreed. "And she said it again later when I was taking to her."

"You're the hot shot profiler – or at least you were before Reddington came along. Profile what Vanessa did."

When Liz just stared at him and didn't say anything, he prompted her. "Think about it. You said she didn't come at him with a gun or a knife. Going after someone with acid ..."

Liz took over. "Vanessa wasn't trying to kill Reddington ... "

 _OOO_

Liz pounded on Donald's neighbor's door.

As soon as Dembe opened it, she brushed past him into the room to confront Reddington.

"Mr. Kaplan _has_ Agnes."

Reddington looked more sad and frustrated than angry. "Don't start that again."

"She does." Liz insisted.

"I told you – Mr. Kaplan is dead."

" _No_ , she's not. Cruz saw her. Cruz saw her _after_ you shot her."

Reddington shook his head. "That's not possible."

Glaring at the scratches on Reddington's face, Liz asked. "Where did you shoot her?"

"I told you, I brought her into the woods. Into the middle of nowhere."

"No, I mean ... where _on her_ did you shoot her?"

Reddington refused to answer.

Head down, his brow furrowed, Dembe confirmed what Liz had started to suspect. "He shot Kate in the face with the Browning."

Looking and sounding if possible even more distraught than earlier, Reddington cried out. _"I told you to wait at the car."_

Solemnly Dembe answered. "I did."

"Vanessa didn't come at you with a gun or a knife. She wasn't trying to kill you. She was trying to _disfigure_ you _._ That's what Vanessa meant when she said 'an eye for an eye'. Mr. Kaplan is alive."

Shaking his head, Reddington looked stunned. "I shot her from less than ten feet away."

"Did you check her?" Liz asked taunting him. "Did you put a few extra slugs in her to make sure she was dead?"

Reddington didn't answer. Quietly, Dembe did. "Elizabeth, Kate is dead."

Dembe wouldn't look at Reddington. "A few days later, after I left Raymond at the church – I went back for Kate. To bury her."

"No!" Elizabeth didn't want to give up this last bit of renewed hope for Agnes … or Mr. Kaplan. "I want to see! Take me there! Now!"

 _OOOOOO_

Elizabeth found it unnerving to be back here standing over her own grave.

Reddington hadn't helped to bury Mr. Kaplan and he didn't help to unbury her.

Together, Dembe and Ressler worked quickly to remove the first few feet of dirt, but more slowly, more carefully as they got deeper.

Reddington wouldn't even watch. He was just standing off to the side staring at the adjacent grave markers.

"She's still here." Having unearthed her, Dembe had reached his limit. Leaving her wrapped, Dembe and Ressler climbed out of the grave.

Burying her, the careful wrapping, those were signs of remorse. Dembe's remorse. Not Reddington's.

Donald touched her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Liz. It was a stupid idea. I shouldn't have gotten your hopes up."

Tears beginning to silently stream down her face, Liz looked at Ressler pleadingly. "I have to see."

"Don't." Dembe warned her.

But Liz told Donald. "I have to."

With a hangdog look, he climbed back down into the hole.

Getting a good look once Donald had unwrapped the shroud, Elizabeth turned to vomit and sob.

Mr. Kaplan's face was gone. She was recognizable only by her clothes and her haircut.

Ressler waited until she stopped retching to ask. "What do you want to do, Liz? Do you want me to rebury her here or bring her somewhere else? Just tell me what you want."

His tone pleading. Dembe objected to the idea of moving Mr. Kaplan. "No. Leave her here. I brought Kate here for a reason. This is where she belongs."

Turning to glare at Reddington, Liz found him still staring at the statues on the other nearby graves. "What I want is for him to look at her."

Ignoring her, Reddington just kept staring at the two angels – one big and one small.

 **"Look at her!"** Liz demanded.

When Reddington shook his head, Liz lunged at him. She grabbed his already injured face and tried to make him look.

Dembe didn't try to stop her.

Climbing back out, Donald was the one that grabbed her. He held her as she sobbed and glared at Reddington.

"Look at Mr. Kaplan! I'm not leaving here until you do!"

Reddington met Liz's eyes. He nodded.

He looked down at the open grave. His face was almost, but not quite expressionless. He stared for a full minute and then he tilted his head. He stared another minute before he put his hands over his eyes and made a sound like a laugh – maybe it even was a laugh.

Liz felt physically repulsed.

Removing his hands from his eyes, he sighed and his expression brightened as though a tremendous burden had just been lifted.

 _"Oh my dear, dear Mr. Kaplan."_

Liz and the others just looked at him in horror as he started one of his soliloquies.

"It's an old wives tale that a person's hair and nails continue to grow after they are dead. They don't. Kate explained it to me once. What happens is that the skin recedes making more of the hair and nails visible.

"She's about the right height and weight and this is the outfit she was wearing but …" Reddington cocked his head to the side. " … Since when was Kate a blond?"

"What?" Stomach turning, Liz forced herself to look again. There was maybe a quarter, not even a half inch of hair at the roots that wasn't brown. "It's white."

"Is it? Is it white?" Reddington asked peering down. His smile momentarily faltered.

Liz dismissed Reddington's comments. "Mr. Kaplan colored her hair. Her roots are showing."

Reddington stared another minute with that faltered look before jumping down into the grave himself.

"What are you doing?" Liz cried out as Reddington untied Mr. Kaplan's scarf and began undoing the buttons of her jacket. "Stop that!"

"Raymond!" Even Dembe protested as Reddington moved on to unbuttoning her blouse.

"I do at times use hollow point bullets and I told Dembe to wait at the car so he would have no way of knowing, but I didn't use the hollow points on Kate."

Aghast, Liz again asked. "What are you doing?"

Pulling open Mr. Kaplan's blouse, Reddington checked her side. The skin was mottled but Dembe had wrapped her so tightly that the decay and insect activity were still relatively minimal. "There should be an old bullet scar _here_. The first time I met Mr. Kaplan, someone had just shot her in the side."

He tugged the fabric down her shoulder. "I tried to finish her off. I only managed to graze her before she got the upper hand, but I _definitely_ left a scar."

Reddington sounded manic as he picked up Mr. Kaplan's wrist and tugged up the cuff of that sleeve. "There's no scar _here_! There _should be_ a scar here. Mr. Kaplan always wore long sleeves - even in the summer - to hide it but I've seen it."

"So? She went to your buddy Abraham to have cosmetic surgery to lessen the scars." Liz reasoned.

Reddington continued to undress her. "There should be a scar _here._ Kate was admitted to the hospital in preterm labor. The doctors were able to stop the contractions, but they kept Mr. Kaplan there at the hospital on bedrest for the rest of the pregnancy. I think that's when she – _understandably_ – developed her aversion to hospitals.

"A girl her age, unmarried, with no parents she would speak of, the hospital director must have thought Mr. Kaplan would be easy pickings. He had promised a wealthy donor a healthy, white newborn for his wife.

"The couple had a six week holiday to Europe planned. They wanted a newborn – not a two week old or a four week old when they came back. The baby still wasn't full term, but the day before they were scheduled to leave, the director performed an unnecessary c-section on Kate. He _cut_ the baby right out of her to give to them."

Liz couldn't keep it together anymore listening to the litany of scars detailing brutal acts committed against Mr. Kaplan – brutal acts that had culminated in one final act perpetrated by her supposed longtime friend.

"The police found the bodies, but it was before DNA. Dom and Mr. Brimley had taken a couple of baseball bats to them. At the inquest, the coroner admitted that he ended up tossing a coin to decide which one to release as the husband and which as the hospital director."

Liz recognized one name, but not the other.

"And there should be another bullet scar _somewhere_ in here. I'm just not sure where." He began running his fingers through Mr. Kaplan's hair, lifting it up in sections to examine her scalp. "When I saw her to return Annie's ring, they had her whole head shaved and bandaged. The next time I saw her, her hair had grown back in."

Not content with his current vantage point, Reddington pulled Mr. Kaplan to a sitting position and stepped into the space he had made behind her.

He rambled as he crouched down and searched the back of her head. "Katarina blamed herself, but it was my fault. They were looking for Annie to send me a message, but Kate and Annie were a package deal."

There might not be the scars that Reddington was expecting, but there were other marks. Bite marks. Some kind of animal must have been at Mr. Kaplan's body before Dembe had buried it.

"I always said to Kate that I would believe she was actually going straight when she stopped carrying around the Smith and Wesson that she stole from Dom."

Liz was just having trouble putting together why Mr. Kaplan's clothing hadn't looked disturbed before Reddington got to her. Dembe might have tried to fix her up after finding her, but shouldn't there have been scratches and tears in the material?

"Most criminals can't stop. Whatever reason they start, they can't stop. They can't help themselves. They get addicted to the excitement, the thrill. That's how I knew you and Tom could never work out. Because he would never be able to give up the life he always knew to settle down."

Dembe must have changed her outfit – but no, Reddington said that that was the outfit she had been wearing.

"Kate was a rare bird. She said she would stop and she actually did."

Liz didn't bother to point out that whatever missing scar Reddington was looking for on Mr. Kaplan's head was probably on the piece of the back of her skull that he had blown off when he shot her in the face.

Giving up his search, Reddington let Mr. Kaplan's hair fall back in place.

Reddington didn't seem to notice the macabre spectacle he made as he let the dead woman's body lean against him. "They were calling for a white Christmas that year. Annie didn't do well in the cold anymore because of her arthritis. Mr. Kaplan wanted to get out before the storm so we had an early Christmas. So that Carla and the girls wouldn't see it, Kate put the 586 in with the god awful sweater Annie picked out for me.

"They shot two unarmed women in the head to let me know that they were serious about wanting the fulcrum."

Carefully returning the body to a reclining position, Reddington seemed to regain his earlier pep as he addressed the mottled coloring on the torso and neck. "And where is all this bruising coming from? Kate hit Mato with the car, she didn't get hit by one."

Reddington shook his head. "Given the circumstances, I can understand Dembe not realizing, but this _isn't_ Mr. Kaplan. This isn't even Mr. Kaplan's work. This is too sloppy."

Donald asked. "If that's not Mr. Kaplan, who is that?"

"That ..." Reddington shook his head. "... I don't know."

Ressler pointed out a troubling fact. "Look at the edges of the gunshot wound. Whoever this was, this was done while they were alive."

That put a damper on Reddington's new found joie de vivre. "That's not Kate's style."

OOO

He never asked her name.

Little girl. Pretty lady. Sweetheart. _City mouse._

There were things that he did ask her.

"Won't your mister be worrying about you. Wondering where you are?"

Following his gaze to the band on the ring finger of her left hand Mr. Kaplan answered truthfully. "No. I have been on my own for a long time now."

Uneasy with his continued focus on her ring, she repositioned her hands to rest on her lap with her right hand covering the gold band.

"Children?"

"No." Mr. Kaplan looked away. "Not anymore."

 _tbc_


	8. Race Among the Ruins

_Chapter 8_

 _Race Among the Ruins_

Back at the Post Office, Reddington was holding his hat in his hands fidgeting with it. He kept running his fingers along the brim.

"Harold, I would like to borrow a few of your people. Agents Ressler and Navabi should do nicely."

"Where are we going?" Elizabeth asked.

"Not we." Reddington corrected her. " _You_ are staying right here until I figure out what we are dealing with."

"Where are _you_ going?"

"Where do you usually go when you lose something important to you?"

Aram half raised his hand. "Usually, I go to the last place I remember having it."

With an unconvincing smile, Red gestured to Aram. "There you have it."

Aram blushed. "That was a rhetorical question, wasn't it?"

Ressler clapped him on the back. "You think?"

"Where is that?" Liz asked.

Ressler chimed in. "Yes, where exactly did you leave Mr. Kaplan for dead after you shot her?"

When Reddington named the national park, Cooper commented. "That's a very large tract of land to search. Aram, put it up on the screen."

"No!"

Cooper, Reddington, everyone looked to Aram.

"I'm going to abstain."

Cooper looked at him baffled. "You can't abstain."

"Agent Navabi abstained from going to Cuba to help look for Liz." Aram explained his reasoning. "Mr. Reddington tried to kill Mr. Kaplan. I'm not going to help to find her just so he can do it again."

Liz hadn't thought of that. She turned to look at Reddington with suspicion.

He denied it. "It was a fit of pique. A childish impulse. Like when a parent calls you out for doing something wrong and you do it all the more. The moment has passed. I'm not going to try to hurt Kate – Mr. Kaplan again. I need to find her. I just want to talk to her. I need to _know_ that she is safe."

He didn't come right out and say it, but Reddington had been deeply troubled ever since the medical examiner Liz had called to the scene had suggested that the bite marks on the woman Dembe had buried as Mr. Kaplan were human bite marks.

They were all troubled – especially Dembe. If he had caught the switch this search would have been started months ago.

"Do you promise?" Aram asked.

"I do." Reddington seemed sincere.

"Okay." Aram relented and brought up the map.

Taking out his phone, Reddington pressed a few buttons and took a few steps away. Her suspicions raised by Aram's suggestion, Liz followed after him to listen in.

"I need to see you and all the girls right away. I am going to send the plane to pick you up."

 _"Sorry, Red. The girls have kennel cough."_

"Kennel cough? What is that?"

 _"They can't travel. Some other time."_

When the caller hung up without so much as another word, Reddington took the phone from his ear and just stared at it in his hands for a moment.

Turning back to the team, he informed Harold. "We're also going to need some dogs."

Cooper took off his glasses. _"_ It's been two months. What are you hoping to find there?"

"I don't know, but the place I brought Mr. Kaplan to – it wasn't the kind of place where someone would just happen by her as they were passing through. Besides … " Reddington admitted. " … do you have a better idea?"

"You're going to need something with her scent on it - an article of her clothing. Do you have that?" Harold asked.

"No, but I know where to get it." Reddington admitted solemnly. "Dembe and I will meet you there at the service road entrance."

 _OOOO_

He returned to the cabin with freshly killed rabbits in one hand and freshly picked flowers in the other.

"Thousands of acres of forest. What luck that you were left here for me to find? I mean - what were the chances?"

Mr. Kaplan couldn't help but wonder that herself.

"Very fortunate." Mr. Kaplan agreed.

She didn't like to talk. Talking caused problems. Talking got you into trouble.

Her voice was naturally gravelly sounding, but to keep him from expecting her to talk much she let him think otherwise.

Bringing the flowers over in a tin, he set them on the table by the bed. Running his thumb along her jawline uninvited, he asked her. "Are you ready to tell me why someone would do something like this to such a sweet, delicate thing like you?"

She wouldn't allow herself to finch or pull away from his touch. "I used to be his cleaner – his housekeeper. I found out things about him that he can't have anyone else find out."

"He's a criminal."

Wordlessly, she nodded.

 _tbc_

A/N Reviews are greatly appreciated.

Read _No Rest For the Wicked_ if you want to know where Reddington goes to retrieve a piece of clothing, a coat, belonging to Mr. Kaplan.


	9. For Lovin' Me

_That's what you get for lovin' me_

 _That's what you get for lovin' me_

 _Everything you had is gone._

 _As you can see_

 _That's what you get for lovin' me_

 _I ain't the kind to hang around_

 _With any new love that I found_

 _'Cause movin' is my stock in trade_

 _I'm movin' on_

 _I won't think of you when I'm gone_

 _So don't you shed a tear for me_

 _'Cause I ain't the love you thought I'd be_

 _-Goldon Lightfoot For Lovin' Me_

 _Chapter 9 For Lovin' Me_

From the safety of the post office, Aram asked. _"_ I don't understand. Why is Mr. Reddington using our people? He never uses our people. Why isn't he using his own resources to find Mr. Kaplan?"

Beside him, Cooper answered. "Because it wouldn't exactly be loyalty inspiring if what Mr. Kaplan has done gets out."

Over the open com line, Samar added. "Or what Reddington did."

"We're about to breach the cabin." Agent Ressler informed them as he turned on his body cam to add visual for them.

As Mr. Reddington and Dembe opened the door and entered the cabin, Ressler moving in right behind them began coughing.

"Eau de been dead for at least a few weeks." Samar added for those not there in person.

Beside Aram, Liz began chanting to herself. "Oh God! Please don't be Agnes! Please don't be Agnes!"

Aram reached out to hold her hand.

"I said two weeks – not two days." Samar had gotten more and more snarky particularly with Liz.

"All clear." Samar made it official. "No Kaplan and no Agnes. There's no sign that a baby has ever been here."

Desperate for some kind of lead, Elizabeth asked. "What about Mr. Kaplan? Is there any sign that she was _ever_ there?"

Agent Ressler answered. "I'd say it's a safe bet." He turned so that his body camera rested on the cause of the smell. The dead man had the business end of a tooth brush sticking out of his ear. The insect activity was considerable.

 _"Raymond ..."_

Dembe may have called out to just Mr. Reddington, but Agent Ressler also looked over in time to see Dembe lift up the metal shackle and pull on it to show that it was bolted to the floor by the bed.

As Agent Ressler - and with him his body cam - looked back to the dead man there was something Aram didn't understand and he said as much. "Do you think he was wearing some kind of uniform she needed? Is that why Mr. Kaplan stole that man's clothes after killing him?"

Despite being safely miles away, Aram jumped as Mr. Reddington unloaded his entire clip into the clearly already dead man's body.

The footage from the body camp jumped too as Agent Ressler - standing uncomfortably close to the body - stepped back. He swore as he bumped into the cabinet behind him, jostling it.

Something small and shiny fell to the ground.

It seemed to glide about the room before finally coming to a stop at Mr. Reddington's feet.

"What is that?" Liz asked. "Is that …?

Picking it up, Mr. Reddington stared at it so sadly before closing his hand around what Aram was certain was a wedding ring.

A hand to her nose trying to block out the smell, Agent Navabi asked. "How much longer is it going to take for my transfer to go through?"

 _OOO_

 _"You understand, Kate, that I -"_

 _"- Have no choice? Isn't that the speech, Raymond? That I know too much? Every single one of your weaknesses. All of your faults. All your secrets. I dedicated my life to you. You entrusted me with everything you value. Your freedom. Your life. A child._

 _"I have never failed you. What you see as a betrayal of trust was actually a fulfillment of your wishes. To protect your interests. No more. No less."_

 _"You presumed to decide what was best for me. Even if I resolve the anger, the pain you caused, I can't trust you. Ever._

 _"I am standing before a stranger._

 _"And yet I know you believe that what you did was best for Elizabeth … Which is why I brought you here. You've told me you've always wanted a pristine, unspoiled place to live out your days in peace._

 _"So the acre is yours._

 _"For all eternity."_

 _Kate landed face down._

 _She gave out a little groan as he turned her over._

 _Putting his gun away, ignoring what it would do to his custom tailored trousers, Raymond kneeled down on the ground. He put one arm behind her neck and gathered her up in his arms._

 _His shot had merely grazed and dazed her. The wound on her face was bleeding profusely, but her breathing was barely even what he would call ragged. She would live._

 _It took a moment, but her eyes fluttered open._

 _He kissed her forehead and he apologized. "I'm sorry, Kate."_

 _And then he used his free hand to cover her nose and mouth._

 _Putting his cheek to her forehead, he shushed her as she weakly struggled against him._

Gasping for air, Kate woke up.

Opening her eyes, she gasped for another reason as she found _him_ sitting beside her on the little camp bed watching her.

Trying to will her respiration and heart rate back to normal, she closed her eyes.

He reached out a finger to brush the hair out of her face.

She had always hated the men who did that. Who would touch you uninvited in seemingly innocuous ways in an attempt to intimidate you. If you called them on it, they always denied being anything but friendly. Called you an uptight bitch or worse.

There was no question that this one knew better.

She forced herself to open her eyes back up.

"That certainly seemed like an interesting dream you were having, little darling. What do you say you tell me about it?"

 _tbc_


	10. Restless

A/N Written after 4.2 Became au around 4.6

 _Restless_

"It's been almost a week."

On his way to the Post Office, Raymond had spotted Elizabeth at the park. He took a seat next to her on the bench. "I know."

"Maybe Mr. Kaplan is angry because Tom and I didn't do enough to help her."

"No Lizzie. It's not that."

She didn't look at him – wouldn't meet his eyes as she spoke. "I should have known what you would do. I should have anticipated it and told you not to. I should have pushed more and _earlier_ for you to tell me where Mr. Kaplan was. Maybe then I could have found her before -" Liz broke off. "Maybe that's why she's punishing me. Because after everything she did for me, I didn't care enough to ask the question, to go looking for her."

When Lizzie turned to him with tears in her eyes, Raymond had to blink rapidly in an effort to keep his own tears at bay. "Mr. Kaplan isn't punishing you, Lizzie."

"She has Agnes."

"And she will bring her back to you. You just have to be patient."

"It's been almost a week."

"I know."

"If she's not punishing me, why hasn't Mr. Kaplan brought Agnes back?" Liz asked.

Red shook his head. "I don't know, Lizzie."

As she started to cry, Raymond pulled her closer and wrapped his arms around her.

When she finally quieted down and pulled away, he handed her his handkerchief.

Taking it, Liz asked something else of him. "You said that Brimley found the men who took Mr. Kaplan's baby. Did Mr. Kaplan get her baby back?"

Raymond didn't want to talk about that. He hadn't been quite himself at the cemetery. He tried to remember exactly what he might have said. "Lizzie, this isn't helpful."

"It is … to me." Liz responded. "I need answers. You have them."

"Not about this."

"You know things. Tell me what you do know. Did Mr. Kaplan get her baby back?"

Raymond looked down at his hands. Looking back up, he pleaded with her. "I don't know how to answer that."

"With the truth." Liz pleaded.

Raymond shook his head. "Please don't ask me that."

"Because I won't like the answer?"

"Because I'm not sure what the truth is."

"You know." Lizzie insisted. "Tell me."

Unable to answer, Raymond shook his head.

Liz read an answer in that. "She never did."

Liz bit her lip. He could tell she was trying to keep from crying again. "You said she had children."

Raymond cringed and rubbed his hand over his face. "Before that, she had a son."

Liz didn't have to ask if, just how. "How did he die? Mr. Kaplan's son?"

He shook his head. "Elizabeth, you are asking about people and events that happened before I came into Mr. Kaplan's life. Things Kate never talked about. Things I only have at best second hand knowledge of."

"So you don't know or you won't tell me?"

 _"I don't know."_

"What was his name? Mr. Kaplan's son?"

"I don't know. His grave marker doesn't have a name on it."

"Was it a natural death or was he murdered?"

"I can't answer that."

"What can you tell me?" Liz pleaded.

Raymond shook his head. He gave her the closest thing to first hand knowledge he had. "He was between three and six months old."

It was an odd answer. Liz looked at him.

"At Kate's house, there was a door upstairs that was always locked. I was curious about what was in there. I thought it would be something exciting, something interesting, something -" Raymond shook his head. "- I don't know what I thought was going to be in there, but Katarina knew I was curious so she took me there once. He had been dead since before Katarina was even born, but everything of his was still there in that room."

Liz said it for him. "Baby clothes are sized in ranges. 0-3 months, 3-6 months."

As far as Liz was concerned that answered that. "So it was a natural death. He must have been sick or -" Raymond didn't have much of a poker face of late. He looked away, but not before she saw.

Liz gasped. "It wasn't. Someone killed Mr. Kaplan's baby?"

" _No!_ " He protested adamantly before admitting. _"I don't know._

"What did my mother tell you happened to Mr. Kaplan's son?"

Raymond looked down. "Kate was a new doctor, an intern or a resident. They didn't have the time limits that they do now. She worked seventy-two hours on followed by seventy-two hours off to eat, sleep, study, and then head back in for another seventy-two hours on. Kate didn't have time for a baby, but her girlfriend wanted one so Kate had one as something to keep her girlfriend busy and happy while she was at work."

"What happened to her son?" Liz asked.

Raymond protested. "Kate and I _never_ talked about any of this. All I know is what Katarina told me, but Katarina wasn't always a reliable source. She used to make up stories to try to explain things."

 _"What did my mother tell you happened to the baby?"_

Raymond looked down at his hands. "Kate's girlfriend was a narcissist. Kate only had the baby because her girlfriend wanted one, but then her girlfriend got jealous of the affection Kate had for him and the time she spent with him. She -"

Breaking off, he shook his head adamantly. "- I don't believe Katarina. I _never_ believed Katarina – _not_ on that."

"Why would my mother say something like that if it wasn't true?"

Raymond tipped his head. "Children make up stories to explain things that they don't understand."

"Like how another child could just die." Liz supplied with something of a relieved sigh.

Raymond didn't quite nod.

They lapsed into merciful silence.

 _OOO_

"Where are we?" Cooper asked.

Samar answered. "The autopsy reports have started coming back. Those with no obvious C.O.D. from Kirk's hideout are coming back as poison.

"Poison. That's a woman's game." Donald pointed out.

Cooper countered. "It's also a smart solution if you are greatly out numbered. By their matching stomach contents it looks like it was put in some kind of communal meal that Kirk's security force ate."

Donald responded. "According to Liz, Vanessa already admitted as much."

"Where is Keen?" Cooper asked.

"She's in our office." Donald answered, but when he turned towards their shared office, it was empty.

"She said she needed some air … after the files came in from the M.E." A glum Aram told him.

"Where are we with the Woodsman's victims?" Cooper asked.

"They've found fourteen bodies so far – not including the one that Dembe thought was Mr. Kaplan. That one had other injuries consistent with the other bodies, but the body in Liz and Mr. Kaplan's grave died of the gunshot wound to the face. The first few autopsies are back on the ones buried around the cabin. Most of them are coming back as strangulation, possibly accidental, but there is enough other trauma that the M.E. isn't ready to commit."

 _"Accidental?"_ Donald repeated.

Samar's tone clearly conveyed how distasteful she was finding the situation. "The Woodsman appears to have strangled his victims repeatedly. Based on the varying degree of _other_ trauma on his victims, the medical examiner thinks he may not have intended to kill some of them when he did."

"I don't think that qualifies as accidental." Donald objected.

But Samar was already moving on. "One of the victims shows signs that she may have made an attempt to escape or ... been released to be hunted. Her throat was ripped out by some kind of animal just like Kirk's was. They're comparing DNA from the saliva to see if it's a match."

 _"_ They've found fourteen bodies _so far_ around the cabin _,_ but ... _"_ Ressler pointed out. "... it's bear country. There's no telling how many more they _won't_ find. There's no telling how many more there would have been had the Woodsman's luck not run out finding Mr. Kaplan."

Staring at his monitor, Aram spoke softly. "Not so lucky for Mr. Kaplan."

"Luck had nothing to do with it." Samar scoffed.

At the others' blank stares an incredulous Samar asked. "Am I the only one who doesn't believe in coincidences? Raymond Reddington has been feeding us a list of degenerates one by one for years now. I can't be the only one thinking that Reddington _handed_ Mr. Kaplan to the Woodsman."

Grabbing his jacket off the chair, Ressler left.

 _OOO_

"Lizzie, we should get you back to the safe house."

"No way." Donald stepped in his way. "Elizabeth isn't going anywhere with you."

They both turned to stare at Ressler. "Come on, Liz. Let's get you back inside."

"Donald -" Reddington started, but Ressler didn't let him finish.

"- You tried to kill Kaplan and you screwed up. _Big time._ I've seen _Kill Bill_ enough times to know that this is not going to end well for you or any of the people around you. Keen is safer with me than she is with you."

Reddington didn't say anything.

"More than that … " Donald looked at him appalled. "You tried to kill _Kaplan_ – a woman you have known and claimed to have cared about for decades. I don't trust you anywhere near Elizabeth."

Herding Elizabeth away from him, still not quite finished, Donald turned back to add. "For what's it's worth, if it comes down to it, between you and her, my money is on Mr. Kaplan."

OOO

It had been just a flesh wound. A no doubt horribly disfiguring flesh wound, but just a flesh wound nonetheless. She knew by how much it hurt in the beginning that it had to be bad, but there wasn't a mirror - at least not that she had seen yet – for her to judge just how bad.

No vital organs has been damaged and the bleeding had been stopped so there was no longer any immediate danger – besides the homicidal maniac keeping her chained to the floor. The problem now was the amount of blood she had lost.

Head wounds always bled a lot.

The body of a woman her weight and height only contained approximately six pints of blood. It was difficult to estimate based on the visual evidence given how much of it could have soaked into the grass in the woods while she was unconscious, but based on her symptoms – her continued tachypnea, the tachycardia, and her thready peripheral pulses, combined with her lethargy, pallor, her inability to properly regulate her body temperature resulting in cold extremities, and her oliguria - she would rank her blood loss as a class III hemorrhage. She had to have lost at least two pints, maybe even two and a half pints out there in the woods.

It took the human body four to six weeks to replenish itself of the red and white blood cells and the platelets when you donated a pint of blood – and that was for a single pint.

Absent the intervention of a transfusion, she was looking at an even longer recovery time.

As for the prospect of escaping …

Even if she had been in peak form, he hadn't been fooling around when he installed that chain. Pulling it out of the floor didn't even look like it would be an option for Baz or Dembe – it certainly wasn't for her.

She had yet to see a key for the shackle.

The way she saw it she had a few options.

If she could find or fashion a weapon, she could kill him now and take off the foot. Using the camp cook top he had, she could cauterize the wound.

She could and would do it, but even being prepared in advance for it with a tourniquet and something to cauterize the wound, it was still too risky. She had already lost too much blood. If she passed out from the pain of cutting off her own foot or the blood loss before getting it fully cauterized she was done for.

Even if she did succeed in cutting it off and cauterizing the wound in time, then what? 55,000 acres. That was 86 square miles. How far could she really expect to get on one foot?She knew how long they had been driving on the service roads through the forest before Raymond had stopped the car.

She hadn't been fully cognizant during her sleigh ride here, but she found it doubtful that he had taken her anywhere closer to civilization.

She hadn't heard or seen any evidence of a car nearby.

No … She needed get him to take off the shackle – even if it was only for a moment so she could see where he kept the key. She needed to gain his trust.

 _tbc_

A/N If anyone is actually reading this story, speak now or forever hold your peace.


	11. The Circle is Small

_The Circle is Small_

"Raymond, I don't know what to tell you. She's gone – like a fart in the wind."

A tired and frustrated Raymond stared at him waiting. Glen just stared back.

This was their dance. Glen _always_ did this.

He really wasn't feeling it, but Red said his lines. "Glen, you are the _best_ there is at finding people. If _anyone_ can find her it's you."

"That's just it, Raymond. _No one_ is going to find her."

Glen held up his hands to ward off any further argument. "I'm not bullshitting you this time, Red. I may be the best at finding people, but _this is Kaplan_ we are talking about. She has spent a lifetime making people disappear. She's the best there is."

Glen crossed his arms over his considerable girth. "In this case, I'm not ashamed to admit I'm beat.

"Glen -"

"- Raymond, you may market the cease to exist in sixty seconds package, but Mr. Kaplan is the one who originated it. Red, until she wants to be found, you are never going to see her."

Raymond frowned.

"Think about what you're asking here. This would be like asking me to find you. Kaplan has had every one of _your_ resources and everyone of _her_ resources at her fingertips for decades. All your safe houses, all your contacts ..."

Glen shrugged his shoulders and asked. "Why do you need me to find Kaplan anyway? Did you two have some kind of a falling out?"

"Glen, I told you. Mr. Kaplan took a little holiday, but I _need_ to get in touch with her."

"Okay, okay! Maybe it would help if you gave me a little information to work from."

"Like what?"

"A last known address, a phone number, a date of birth, oh I don't know – _her actual name_. You know, just a little something to get me started."

A frustrated Red picked up his hat and stood. "Keep looking."

He had his hand on the door knob when Glen called after him. "Tell me Red, do you have a _recent_ photo?"

Raymond hesitated, but kept going.

Getting into the car, he informed Dembe. "Glen has been compromised."

"What do you want to do about it?" Dembe asked.

"For now … nothing. Let's take a ride to see another old friend."

OOOO

Glen stayed right where he was as Red left. Through the window he saw Dembe open the car door for Reddington. It wasn't until they had driven away that the side door opened.

Glen's update was superfluous. From the next room, she would have been able to hear everything. "He fell for it. Hook line and sinker. But then it wasn't too hard to sell. After all, I really couldn't find you even if I did try. You found me."

It was rude, but a nervous Glen couldn't help but stare at the messed up side of her face. "So what's next, Two Face? Are you about to go all Lady Stoneheart on his ass?"

She didn't answer. Pulling one of those foreigner scarves up over the worst of her scars, she left.

 _OOOO_

"How long has your mister been gone?"

Kate didn't have to think about the answer – the only thing to think about was if she should give out the truth. But the truth was easier to keep track of. "Twenty-six years."

"That's an awful long time to keep wearing that ring."

Kate said nothing.

 _tbc_

A/N Reviews are greatly appreciated.


	12. All I'm After

_All I'm After_

"And here I thought you told me you were retiring." Raymond commented as he entered Brimley's bustling little garage workshop.

This was where he should have started. This was where he should have come a week ago. Straight from the cemetery, he should have come here.

The truth was he had simply been too ashamed.

"Anyone I know? Anyone I should know?"

Raymond didn't usually tell other people their business, but he questioned Mr. Brimley's use of the electric sander. "Should you really be using that what with the oxygen?"

Brimley wasn't his usual gregarious self. He wouldn't even look at Raymond.

With his eyes, the man strapped to the chair with the tourniquet on what was left of his limb did look to Reddington - pleadingly - but with the cloth pushed into his mouth he produced nary a sound.

"You know when you are trying to get information out of someone I find it helps to – at least occasionally – take the gag out."

"Who said anything about wanting information from him? I just have a bit of frustration I am trying to work through at the moment."

"Don't we all." Reddington agreed before getting down to business. "Mr. Kaplan. I need to see her."

"Careful what you wish for, Raymond."

Still not looking at him, Brimley put down the electric sander. "Kate may never have been a pretty girl, but when she smiled she had a sweet face. She didn't deserve that."

"I know." Reddington admitted. "So you've seen her. How is she? Is she hurt?"

"Suddenly, you care?"

Finally turning to look at him Brimley just glared at Raymond. "Raymond, you may look at me and only see a doddering old man who can't make it more than two steps without needing his oxygen, but Raymond the _only_ reason you aren't the one enjoying my hospitality right now is because Mr. Kaplan said you are off limits. She knows about that stunt Vanessa tried to pull and she is _not_ happy."

"Where can I find her?"

"You can't."

"I _need_ to find her."

"No. _You don't."_

As Brimley angrily picked up his electric hedge clippers, Dembe pulled his gun. Red held up a hand to stop his young protector.

"Mr. Kaplan will find you. When she wants to - _she_ will find _you_."

Red tried again, but got shut down. "I -"

 **"- _Maybe you didn't_ _hear me_ _. Maybe your hearing is as far off as your shot._ _We_** _ **are done, Raymond. You're done.** "_

As Brimley went back to work on his guest, with a nod, Red picked up his hat and headed for the door.

Mr. Brimley got off one last parting shot. "Annie would be so disappointed in you."

OOO

Dembe watched Raymond through the rear view mirror. "We need to change safe houses."

"No."

"Raymond -"

"- I said _no_."

"Raymond, you may be in danger. We _all_ may be in danger."

"You go, Dembe. If you are afraid of Mr. Kaplan, _you go,_ but I am staying."

 _OOOOO_

"Raymond would see me coming to you as a betrayal, but I didn't know where else to go."

Dembe looked down at his hands as he confessed. "He wants Kate to find him. He wants her to punish him."

 _OOO_

It was a careful balancing act. She needed to bide her time to regain her strength, but she knew she couldn't wait too long.

He had the advantage in height, weight, and strength.

She was thankful not to have lost the eye but with the cracked lens she was still operating half blind.

Then there was the matter of the dog. Why did there have to be a dog?

The only thing she had working to her advantage at the moment was the element of surprise.

She was gaining her strength back day by day but she didn't let on. When he was there she let him help her to stand and move about.

He would leave sometimes for hours at a time. When he wasn't there she would move about the cabin as far as her tether would allow building back up her strength. She explored her surroundings, searching for something that could be used to pick the lock on her leg and something, anything that could be used as a weapon - always careful to put everything back exactly as it was before. Always careful to not be at it too long.

 _tbc_

A/N Yeah? Nay? Meh?


	13. I'm Not Suppose to Care

_I'm Not Suppose to Care_

Harold had wanted an outsider's opinion. Finishing his rundown of events, he waited.

Cynthia pondered his tale a minute before starting to pick apart the threads of his story.

"How did this Mr. Kaplan get from the church where the wedding was taking place to the hospital to pick up Keen when no one else could?"

Cynthia Panabaker did not disappoint.

Cooper told her. "Mr. Kaplan was never at the church."

Panabaker's looked skeptical. "Your Mr. Kaplan was – _is_ a smart cookie. She knew that there was a very real chance that this could go south. Why would she put herself on the line – risk her own life for someone who didn't even think enough of her to invite her to her wedding?"

Cynthia gave one her homespun phrases that Harold only half the time had the foggiest idea what they meant.

"You and your coon hounds aren't just barking up the wrong tree, Harold – you're chasing the wrong squirrel."

Harold spread out his hands to show he had nothing.

Cynthia translated. "You're asking yourself the wrong question, Harold."

"What's the right question?" Harold asked.

"This isn't about Reddington. This was never about Reddington."

"I'm listening." Cooper conceded.

Cynthia laid it out for him. "You're operating under the mistaken assumption that Mr. Kaplan took Agnes as revenge for what Reddington did to her. The flaw in that is that Mr. Kaplan took Agnes from Reddington _before_ Reddington tried to kill her.

"The question you should be asking yourself is who is Agnes Keen – maybe Elizabeth Keen, but definitely Agnes Keen – to Mr. Kaplan?"

 _OOO_

Harold approached Aram's work station. "We don't have a sample of Agnes Keen's DNA to enter into the database, do we?"

"No."

"But we do have Elizabeth's."

"Sure. All agents have to provide an elimination sample in case of cross contamination of crime scenes."

"Add Keen's DNA to the database. Run it for any familial matches."

 _OOO_

She had never been a head turner.

She had made a career out of being someone you didn't notice. Someone who blended in.

More than a few times - when it was necessary – she had killed someone in a crowd in broad daylight and afterward been able to just disappear, to just fade into the crowd. She had one of those unremarkable faces. Witnesses just hadn't been able to remember her.

She _had_ had one of those unremarkable faces.

Staring into the small pocket mirror she had just found, Kate had to admit … not anymore.

 _tbc_

A/N If you are reading kindly take a minute to review.


	14. Ribbon of Darkness Over Me

A/N Sometimes you get lyrics, sometimes you don't, but all the chapter titles are Gordon Lightfoot songs.

 _Ribbon of Darkness Over Me_

Oh how I wish your heart could see  
How mine just aches and breaks all day  
Come on home and take away  
This ribbon of darkness over me

-Gordon Lightfoot

 _OOO_

Harold looked at the man before him.

Reddington had looked so broken after Keen had supposedly died. He still looked broken. Now he just looked a different kind of broken.

"Raymond, I certainly don't agree with your methods, but as appalling as I may find your conduct at times, you are my asset and because of that I have a responsibility to protect you.

"You live in a world where loyalty isn't just everything, it's the only thing. Mr. Kaplan betrayed your trust – I understand that. You did what you felt you had to do. I may not agree with what you did, but I know _why_ you did it.

"But it's a two way street, Raymond. You tried to do what you thought you had to do. But you failed. Now it's Mr. Kaplan's move and given the code you two live by I don't have to wonder what that move will be."

Raymond shook his head. "Harold, you don't _know_ Mr. Kaplan. So please do not _presume_ to know what she would do."

"Raymond, until you … _resolve_ your Mr. Kaplan problem I am adding to Keen's security."

"Mr. Kaplan would _never_ go after Lizzie."

"I may not know Mr. Kaplan, but _neither do you,_ Raymond. Not anymore. Whatever came out of those woods – that's not the Mr. Kaplan you've known for however many years. That's a wounded animal. An animal that _you_ helped to wound. And a wounded animal when it's cornered will turn on you."

Harold asked the question they had all had been wondering. "Did you know what was in those woods? Did you know what the Woodsman was when you gave Mr. Kaplan to him?"

Reddington looked genuinely horrified at the idea. "You cannot believe that I would _ever_ have knowingly given Kate or any woman to a man like that."

Cooper wished that he could believe him. "It doesn't matter what I believe, Reddington. What matters is what Mr. Kaplan believes. I can't imagine a more perfect hell for a woman, but particularly a woman like Mr. Kaplan."

"A lesbian, Harold. It's 2016. It's okay to say the word."

"I've read the autopsy reports for his other victims. You should read them."

Reddington looked offended. "You don't believe me."

"As I said, it doesn't matter what I believe. What matters is what Mr. Kaplan believes."

Sounding distraught, Reddington sighed and closed his eyes. "I didn't give her to him, Harold. Mr. Kaplan knows that. She knows me."

"Raymond, it's been more than a week. You need to resign yourself to the fact that Mr. Kaplan did _not_ take that baby in an effort to get back into your good graces.

"I don't know what your fascination is with Elizabeth Keen and I don't pretend to know. Maybe Mr. Kaplan knows the reason, maybe she doesn't, but clearly she knows Keen is how to get to you in a way that is far more effective than going after you directly."

"Kate would never hurt Elizabeth or Agnes."

Cooper kept pushing. He wanted to hear Raymond say it. " _How_ can you know that?"

"Because even a wounded animal wouldn't -" Reddington caught himself. He shook his head and wouldn't finish.

Frustrated, Harold pointed out. "You claim Mr. Kaplan wouldn't hurt Elizabeth – what do you call what she's doing right now? If Mr. Kaplan has Agnes _why_ hasn't she come forward with her?"

"I don't know the reason, Harold, but what I do know is that if Mr. Kaplan hasn't come forward with Agnes she has a good reason not to." Reddington argued. "There must be some danger that hasn't passed that we aren't aware of. She will bring back Agnes."

Harold looked at the man before him pityingly. "That danger is _you_ , Reddington."

Reddington persisted. "Mr. Kaplan will bring Agnes back."

"You're delusional!" Cooper gave up. "I'm adding to Keen's security. You need to do the same. Dembe tells me you are still using a safe house that Mr. Kaplan set up for you!"

Reddington looked through the glass at his constant companion. "Et tu, Dembe?"

As distasteful as Harold found the idea, he urged the other man. "Reddington, you started this. Now you need to finish it."

 _OOO_

Finding the key was temporarily forgotten.

Every time he left, she kept going back to the small mirror. She would stare into it determined to will herself to not look away, to not cringe as she looked at her new reflection.

She was so engrossed, she lost track of the time. She didn't even hear the door opening.

"City mouse! It's good to see you up and about. I was starting to worry."

Startled by the sound of his voice, she froze.

It wasn't until he was taking the mirror out of her hand that she processed that she had lost an opportunity. The pocket mirror was small – only two inches in diameter, but still … She should have broken it and tried to use the shards to attempt to fashion a weapon.

As she started to put her bandage back on, he reached out to stop her. "Don't be like that, city mouse."

He tucked her hair behind her ear to better put on display the ruined side of her face. "Surviving something like that shows you have true grit."

He showed his teeth as he smiled at her. "I _like_ grit."

 _tbc_


	15. The Pride of Man

_The Pride of Man_

Elizabeth watched Reddington storm out of Cooper's office, and head straight to the elevator without stopping – not for her, not even for Dembe who had to duck to get in as the door came down.

When Cooper came out right after, Elizabeth asked. "Where's Reddington going?"

"Hopefully not to help any more little old ladies across the street." Ressler quipped.

Cooper called them together. "Gather around. We have a new blacklister to locate." Grimly, Cooper said the name. "Mr. Kaplan. What do we know about her?"

Ressler summarized much of what they knew. "Her first name may or may not be Kate. She's in her seventies and up until recently, she was Reddington's cleaner and all around Girl Friday."

"She's seventy-five – possibly seventy-six now." Liz corrected Donald and then explained. "The topic came up when we were playing poker with Reddington's plastic surgeon. She drives a vintage Mercedes with NY plates. She's had some medical training, but I'm not sure how much."

Liz shook her head. She almost couldn't believe it. "Reddington gave you Mr. Kaplan?"

Cooper neither confirmed nor denied. "Since we aren't in the film _North by Northwest_ I think it's safe to say that that isn't her real name. We need to find out who she really is."

"Oh. That's funny!" Aram exclaimed. "I'm a big Hitchcock fan, but I never made that connection. I mean I always knew Mr. Reddington made up the name because he didn't want us to know her real name. It just thought it was done as homage to his mother."

The heads of everyone in earshot swiveled to Aram.

"Homage?" Ressler repeated.

Aram explained the word to him.

Donald sounded exasperated as he responded. "I know what the word means, Aram. I meant _how_ is it homage to his mother?"

Aram said it like it should have been common knowledge. "Mr. Reddington's mother's maiden name was Kaplanovna."

"No, it wasn't." Liz listened to Donald spout off some other name.

"Oh no. That was his stepmother." Aram corrected him. "Mr. Reddington's parents divorced when he was very young. His father remarried soon after." Aram wore a rather judgmental expression as he emphasized. " _Very_ soon after."

Ressler was skeptical. "I hunted Reddington for years. How is this the first I am hearing of this?"

"Mr. Reddington – our Mr. Reddington's father - was given sole custody in the divorce. He told everyone his wife had died. His wife – ex-wife – wasn't given any visitation rights so -"

"- No visitation?" Cooper cried foul. "A woman losing custody is uncommon enough, but no visitation? Why?"

Aram was quick with an answer. "She was deviant." But even quicker to disavow the answer. It came out almost as one word. " _In-the-file._ That is what it said _in_ the file. Mr. Reddington's father caught her having improper relations with one of his students. One of his _female_ students."

Aram turned to his keyboard to pull up the file as proof, but he half turned back to awkwardly further clarify. "The student was one of his medical students."

Donald frowned. "How do you have fifty year old family court records? Are family court records that old even computerized?"

"They're older than that. As I said, our Mr. Reddington was _very_ young when his parents divorced. I had to request copies be unsealed, scanned and sent."

"When? And why would you do that?"

"It was after Mr. Reddington made me watch as he disassembled and then reassembled the gun he said he was going to use to kill me. After that, I decided I wanted to know a little bit more than just what was in our files about him." Aram tried to further justify his actions by adding, "Mr. Reddington has looked into all of us."

Donald was still resisting this new information.

"Reddington having a Russian mother would have tripped more than a few alarms back in his Naval days."

"She didn't emigrate directly from Russia. She emigrated from Poland. From ..." Aram looked down but not at his keyboard. "… Oswiecim at the end of the war."

He paused a moment before going on. "Using a slightly altered last name, Kaplanoski, she came as a war bride - there were a lot of them in those days - so there wouldn't have been as much scrutiny as you might have expected."

Aram pulled up her immigration paperwork. Even in the old black and white photo, Liz could tell that Reddington's mother had been exceptionally beautiful. She wasn't surprised that she had caught some soldier's eye.

"After the divorce, depending on the situation, she alternated between using her actual maiden name and the abbreviated Kaplan."

They were getting off course, Liz thought at first, but her curiosity got the better of her. "Aram, what happened to Reddington's mother? Is she still alive?"

"No. She's been dead for more than twenty-five years. _Actually_ dead this time."

"How did she die?" Liz asked.

"She was murdered." Aram typed at his keyboard to pull up the police file, but he clearly already knew the contents because he began reciting facts before the file finished opening. "She and another woman were shot in the head execution style in Amarillo, Texas. Anastasia died at the scene."

Ressler read over Aram's shoulder. "Local police dismissed it as a mugging gone wrong. Some jewelry was missing - a wedding band - and their purses were taken."

Ressler read it, but he wasn't buying it. "You don't shoot two women in the head in broad daylight to steal their wallets and jewelry."

"No, but you might take someone's wallet and jewelry to make an execution look like a mugging." Cooper suggested.

"Or ..." Remembering what Reddington had said at the cemetery, Liz suggested. " … if you were going to send it to someone as proof."

She looked to Donald. "They were looking for _Annie_ to send a message to Reddington, but Kate and Annie were a package deal."

Ressler realized where she was going. "They shot two unarmed women in the head to let Reddington know that they wanted the fulcrum. But who were they? The Cabal?"

Liz didn't know. She shook her head.

Once bitten, twice shy. Understandably suspicious, Donald asked Aram. "Are we sure it was really Reddington's mother? How did they make the ID?"

Aram had an answer for everything. "Mr. Reddington's mother's tattoo on her arm."

"A lot of people can have the same tattoo."

"Not this tattoo. No two were the same." Aram told them. He pulled up the autopsy photos.

Reddington's mother was a redhead. He may not have gotten his hair color from her, but Reddington had certainly gotten his eyes from her.

Watching as Aram scrolled through the photos, Liz found it jarring to see his green eyes staring lifelessly back at her.

At the sight of the angry looking opening of the Y incision, Liz was surprised that Reddington hadn't managed in some way to prevent there being an autopsy. Where, she wondered, had he been when all this was happening?

Finding the image he was looking for, Aram enlarged it. The tattoo used to identify Reddington's mother wasn't the image of a butterfly or a flower or a heart with her son's name. It was a string of numbers and a letter.

No one said anything.

Cooper finally broke the silence. "So we're thinking the other woman was our Mr. Kaplan. It's a little May December, but I've seen worse. Do we have a name for her?"

"No." Aram clicked away some more on his keyboard. "As I said, the other woman didn't have any ID on her. She was still alive when the ambulance arrived. She was taken to the local hospital for treatment. By then, she had slipped into a coma. They had to put a metal plate in her head. While there at the hospital, she never regained consciousness to give a name or a statement to the police.

"Anastasia's body was never claimed – officially – but it went missing a few weeks later. By that time, the other woman had been transferred – still comatose - to a long term facility. She was a patient there for almost two months – still in a coma – until one day … she wasn't."

"She wasn't in a coma anymore. She woke up." Cooper suggested.

"No - well maybe. Probably. But maybe not." Aram stumbled over his words. "I don't know. She just disappeared from the facility."

"There was no transfer paperwork? No one saw her being moved?"

"Well all the rest of the patients were comatose or in long term vegetative states so … no."

Donald ventured a different guess. "I'm going to go with she just woke up and walked out."

Despite the seriousness of the situation, looking at him Liz couldn't keep the corners of her lips from going slightly up.

Cooper raised an eyebrow, but no one tried to contest the idea.

"What about the family court records? Do they list the other woman by name? Was she called on to testify?" Cooper asked.

Aram shook his head. "The only one to testify besides Mr. Reddington's father and mother was Mr. Reddington's nanny …" Aram's judgmental expression was back. " ... who went on to become the next Mrs. Reddington shortly after."

Liz found that odd – not just that Reddington's father had married his son's nanny, but that Reddington _had_ a nanny. To her knowledge, Reddington hadn't come from money.

Cooper frowned. "If she was one of Reddington's father's students, then there has to be a record of her there. Run it down. Find her real name."

"I already did." Aram admitted. "Ran it down – well I tried to. Given the time period we are talking about, there weren't a lot of women as students. I found two that didn't return from their summer break. One got married and didn't continue her pursuit to become a doctor. The other woman bounced around from residency to residency for a few years but never actually finished anywhere.

"Her first name was Katherine, but I don't think the last name she was using was her real last name - not unless it just so happened to be the name of the school mascot where she got her undergraduate degree."

"She was already using an alias?" Cooper looked fit to be tied.

Aram turned to Liz to apologize. "I'm sorry. I would have said something sooner, but I didn't make the connection that Mr. Kaplan could actually be that woman. Katherine is such a common name. I mean, it was your mother's name too."

Liz was a little stunned. She hadn't ever processed that before. Katarina _was_ the Russian equivalent of Katherine. Reddington had already admitted that Mr. Kaplan knew her grandparents. Liz wondered how far back their acquaintance went. Was it just a coincidence or had her mother actually been named after Mr. Kaplan?

Aram continued to explain why he hadn't made the connection. "And the age is off. Unless she was some kind of child prodigy – which having seen her transcript with her first year college grades I can assure you, she was _not_ \- Mr. Kaplan is too young to be that medical student. Mr. Kaplan would need to be a little older to be that woman."

Aram might have his doubts, but Liz was sure. "It's her."

Cooper turned to Donald. "Ressler, I want you back out at that cabin. Forensics seems to think that they can take their sweet time getting around to processing that cabin for evidence because Mr Kaplan already solved that case for us. I get it. They want to find and get out of the ground all the bodies they can before the ground completely freezes, but I've had enough of waiting. I don't care if you have to drag them in by their hair or do it at gunpoint, but I want you to get those techs to finish working the _inside_ of that cabin. I know Mr. Kaplan is meticulous, but I want them to scour every inch of that place until they find a print or even a partial that could be hers.

"When he gets back with those prints, Aram, I want you to run them. Run them and when they come back as no match to every criminal database we have, run them against _any_ database you can get your hands on. If she ever had her prints taken to get a work card for a Vegas casino or to get a taxi medallion in New York city or to run a mortuary in Florida – _I want to know_."

Cooper retreated back to his office.

Understandably irked at Aram for not having already mentioned any of this previously, Donald tapped Aram on the back of the head with the rolled up paper in his hand before putting on his jacket.

Given his marching orders, Donald lingered only long enough to give her a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder.

Liz gave him a minute's head start and then quietly slipped out to go find Reddington.

 _OOO_

The weather had taken a sudden turn. If the sunlight that filtered through the cracks in the walls during the day wasn't proof enough of the lack of insulation, the wind bringing the cold air in was.

Across the room watching her shiver even under the blankets, he added another log to the fire.

"You're too thin, city mouse. What are you going to do when it gets cold enough to snow?"

She had had the cot since her arrival. Since he brought her here, he had slept in the chair by the fire. Not anymore.

The cot dipped as he climbed in behind her. Pulling her up against him, he told her "It's the only way to keep you warm, little darling."

He ran a hand up and down her arm a few times to generate some warmth for her before telling her. "Try to get some sleep."

She took time – quite a bit of it – building up her resolve before turning to face him. His eyes were closed, but she knew he wasn't sleeping.

She brushed her fingertips lightly along his cheek and down his jaw line.

Opening his eyes, he reached out to tuck her hair behind her ear.

"You've been so nice to me. Taken such good care of me."

She met his gaze for a moment before leaning over to tenderly brush her lips against his.

When she pulled back, he brushed his thumb across her lips.

"City mouse?"

At her nod, he rolled her underneath him.

This wasn't really the game he wanted to play. She was quite sure of that. Still, she had to try ...

This was just an early passing cold snap, but winter was coming.

She had to do whatever it took to get his trust if she was going to get out of here before the first snowfall.

 _tbc_

A/N Yes? No? Sharing your thoughts would be lovely.


	16. Bitter Green

A/N First things first – I was in a rush when uploading the last chapter. I realized that night that I had accidentally uploaded the wrong draft of Chapter 15. It's been fixed so I highly suggest going back to reread it.

Again this story was written after 4.2 based on the lines by Kate that led the viewer – or at least this viewer - to infer that Annie was someone that Raymond also knew and the line where Kate flat out stated that as a baby Liz was put in her arms by Raymond.

It became non canon compliant with the rescue of Agnes in 4.6 and went completely out the window with Requiem.

 _Bitter Green_

Liz found him on the same bench he had found her.

Reddington hadn't shot Mr. Kaplan in a fit of anger immediately upon finding out about her duplicity. He had waited days. He had taken her with him to Cuba and then Texas to use her to help find Liz before bringing her back here and _then_ taking her out to what he thought was an uninhabited forest.

Since his confession, Liz had wondered about the kind of rage that could sustain itself that long. The kind of fury that could allow him to sit beside Mr. Kaplan in a car as they drove for hours knowing full well what he was planning to do to her when they arrived at their destination and not reconsider, not back down. She had wondered about the kind of settled anger necessary for him to shoot her not in the more reliable to hit center mass, but in the much, much more personal face and to then choose to leave her there maybe not for _the_ animal that had found her, but for animals to find her _._

Now she was convinced she had the missing piece. Now she knew that there was more to it than just his anger about Mr. Kaplan's betrayal in trying to help her escape him and his dangerous world.

Taking a seat next to him, she quietly confronted him about what she had just learned. "Mr. Kaplan broke up your parents' marriage."

Reddington more winced than smiled as he denied the specifics, but not the bigger picture. "No. My father broke up my parent's marriage."

He looked out in the distance – not at her – as he spoke.

"My father was a good father and possibly a good man, but he was a lousy husband. He could be at times a terribly cruel husband. My mother was an absolutely stunning woman, but he used to flaunt his affairs under her nose. Every summer we would go to Nantucket to stay at our house there. It was before Nantucket became the tourist trap that it is now, back when it was still more of a fishing village. The house was nothing extravagant – just a little place near the water that had been in my father's family for years.

"There was a cottage set a little ways away from the actual house. It used to be the stables back when horses were the mode of transportation. Every summer under the pretense of needing an assistant, he would bring one of his students - some pretty, naïve young thing to stay. Invariably, within a few weeks he would take up with her.

"Mr. Kaplan wasn't his usual young ingenue.

"Kate was the final insult. Bringing home this _absolute_ plain Jane.

"The packaging might have seemed a little on the plain side at first glance, but the thing about Mr. Kaplan was that once you got to know her, once you considered the total package, she was a fascinating woman.

"My father was a handsome, charming man, but he was perhaps not as worldly as he could have been. I'm sure he was absolutely mystified by Kate's continued failure to succumb to his charms.

"I met her – how could I not have? But _to this day_ , no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I wrack my brain, _for the life of me_ , I can't remember Kate from back then."

Reddington went quiet.

Liz waited.

"I don't have very many memories of my mother from when I was a child, but most of those that I do were magical. I remember one day, she bought a new cookbook. It was 101 different cookies and it had photographs of _every_ one which sounds obvious to have now, but back then cookbooks didn't always have photographs.

"She told me I could pick which kind I wanted and we would make them. There were _so_ many and they all looked so good. I couldn't make up my mind."

Liz watched his entire face light up at the memory.

"So we made them all – well, we set out to. My father came home at recipe 23 – the Italian wedding cookie."

His expression dimmed, though he didn't lose his smile entirely. What remained of it was tinged with confusion. "To this day, I don't understand how anyone could be angry about 23 types of cookies – never mind _that_ angry.

"Kate _never_ got angry at Annie. Kate would never have made her stop at 23 types of cookies. Kate always made sure she had all the flour and shortening she would ever need."

After a moment, he went on. "We had such adventures together, my mother and I. We used to collect sea glass on the beach. Some mornings, we would leave the house with just my little pail and no other plan. We wouldn't even think about turning back until it started to get dark. If I got tired of walking, my mother would just pick me up and carry me until I wasn't tired anymore.

"Nantucket has fifty-five miles of coast and I swear there were days when we must have walked halfway around the entire island before stopping at one of the houses and getting a ride back home."

He closed his eyes and with a smile tipped his head back as he continued to remember. "At night when she couldn't sleep, my mother would wake me up and we would go stargazing. We would lay on the sand or the grass or the snow and we would just stare up at the sky. I could name all the constellations before I could write my name."

Liz interrupted his reminiscing to ask. "Red … did your mother have manic episodes often?"

Straightening and opening his eyes back up, his tone was somewhere between shocked and offended. "They weren't _episodes_. That was just the way she was _all_ the time. It was like she was just made out of air and light and laughter. Sprinkles and sparkles and ..." Reddington's voice caught. "… _glitter_ … except when she got sad. She would get so sad sometimes. And so tired. Some days, she wouldn't be able to get out of bed. But we had good days."

Gently, Liz suggested. "Red, was your mother bipolar?"

"No." He scoffed. "She was just sad sometimes."

She tried again. "I know that there is a stigma att-"

Reddington shook his head. "- She wasn't mentally ill. She was just sad sometimes, but she had reason to be sad. Reasons."

Liz watched his hand go to his arm and absentmindedly rub at the area where his mother's tattoo had been as he continued. "I just didn't understand it at the time."

He kept trying to convince her.

"She was _always_ like that. She was this ethereal creature. Full of light and laughter.

"Kate knew how to handle her. My father didn't. He didn't have the patience. He was this Willy Loman always trying to drag her down to his level. Mr. Kaplan never did. Mr. Kaplan let her soar. If ever Annie started to fall back to Earth, Mr. Kaplan always knew how to get her back up into the light and the laughter."

Putting her hand over his, Liz didn't continue to press the issue. She let the idea go as unimportant.

"Kate _made_ her happy. Kate made her so happy. In _all my life_ , I've never known two people more in love."

Reddington wore a winsome smile as he marveled. "They used to sleep on the same pillow. How can anyone stand to do that?"

Liz couldn't help but smile at his smile.

"Kate adored Annie. Beyond all reason, Kate adored her. There was nothing Kate wouldn't have given her. Nothing she wouldn't have done for her - Mr. Kaplan even put up with me for her."

Reddington bit his lip and looked down. "You have no idea what a bastard I was – how awfully I treated Kate when we met again when I was older."

Not wanting to ruin the moment and make him shut down, Liz bit back her bitter thought – worse than shooting her in the face?

Reddington repeated himself. "There was nothing that Kate wouldn't have begged, borrowed, or more likely just flat out stolen for her. Annie's art collection – all of which Kate stole for her – I've only seen bits and pieces of it here and there. I've never seen it _all_ , but from what I have seen, if you put it all together, I know it wouldn't just rival some of your smaller museums – I dare say it would _dwarf_ some of your larger, more well known institutions.

"Of course that's to be expected given that together Kate and Annie cherry picked from most of those well known institutions."

Reddington's lips turned down. "Annie would see a piece and fall in love with it. She would keep going back to it. She would pine after it like Rapuzel's mother with the rampion growing in the garden of the enchantress. So Mr. Kaplan would have her forge a copy and Mr. Kaplan, well Mr. Kaplan would take care of the details."

Reddington shook his head half bemused. "Every time I walk into a museum and look at a Rembrandt or a Monet, I can't stop myself from searching to try to find the A – the extra signature that Annie would hide in all her work."

Reddington tipped his head. "Annie … Annie was vain and selfish. So very, very selfish, but … " Almost reluctantly, he allowed. " … Annie could give as good as she got sometimes."

He spoke of her as if she were two separate people – his mother and Annie. He spoke of his mother with such warmth and love, but for Annie there was an undercurrent of dislike and distrust to his almost every mention of her. In a way, Liz supposed, to him she was two people.

And still, even at his most damning, he spoke of her more highly than – if Reddington was to be believed – Liz's mother had.

"When Kate got cancer, Kate tried to hide it from Annie so she wouldn't get sad."

Reddington asked her. "Who does that? Who tries to hide that they have cancer?"

Liz let the rhetorical question go unanswered.

"Annie was worse than Vargas when it came to blood and gore. She would pass out at the first sight of it – except when she was causing it. None of us could ever understand how that worked. But she really stepped up when Kate got sick. Kate spent most of her treatment time at home, but there were times when there was no way around it – she had to go to the hospital. Annie had to get her to go because Kate had - has this irrational dislike – aversion even – to hospitals.

"It's really ironic if you think about it - to _be_ a doctor and refuse to go to the hospital. How does that happen? That was another one I could never figured out."

Liz stayed quiet, afraid if she interrupted his meandering to try to direct him, he would stop talking all together.

"My best guess was always that she made some kind of mistake. Some error or miscalculation that cost a patient their life. But ..."

Reddington shook off the idea. " … no, I don't think that was it. There was just so much about the two of them that I never was able to figure out or understand."

Eventually, he got back on track.

"Annie wouldn't leave her side." Liz watched Reddington grimace at the memory. "She had to keep her eyes closed most of the time but she wouldn't leave her side while Kate was sick.

"Some people can pull off the bald look, but Kate was _not_ one of them."

Liz smiled.

"For a while, it didn't seem like Kate was going to make it and I remember thinking they're Kate and Annie – you can't have one without the other. If one goes the other will be sure to follow."

Reddington cleared his throat.

"Even before the cancer, Annie was always desperately afraid of the idea of losing Kate. Kate _never_ gave her any reason to doubt her, but that didn't stop Annie from worrying and … _reacting_ any time someone paid even the slightest hint of that _kind_ of attention to Kate.

"She didn't even like men paying attention to Kate which was ludicrous because Kate is a lesbian. Kate was never going to leave Annie and certainly not for a man. Kate had no interest in men.

"Maybe Annie worried because she liked men _and_ women, but -" Reddington shrugged. All these years later and he seemed to still be trying to work it out. "– I don't know if Annie actually liked men or if liking women just wasn't something you could admit to back then. Of course, I never dared to ask.

"Annie's brother, Dom, he always used to deny that Annie was a lesbian. He was younger, closer to Kate's age, but he was _old school_ Russian and that kind of thing, it was _not_ taken well over there. It _still_ isn't."

Dom.

Liz had heard that name before. Reddington had mentioned him at the cemetery. He was the one that helped Mr. Brimley to kill the men who had stolen Mr. Kaplan's baby.

"He used to say Anastasia never liked other girls. She just liked Kate. Only he always said her name in Russian. _Katya."_

Liz thought about asking about her mother and Mr. Kaplan sharing the same first name, but she didn't. She saved it for another time.

Reddington shook his head. "I blame my father's behavior for Annie's behavior. For her jealousy and her being so overprotective of Kate. I told you, my father, he introduced them."

Liz didn't say anything.

"Kate tried to kill herself after Annie died."

"The scar you were looking for on her wrist." Liz suggested.

"No." He shook his head. "Kate was going for a variation on suicide by cop – only using the Cabal.

"Alan reached out to me when Margaret went missing. He was beside himself. He had realized that someone was hunting high level Cabal members. Making them disappear - sometimes with their wives, sometimes without, but never leaving behind a trace. He thought that I was behind it."

Liz didn't know who he was talking about at first, but as he had gone on, she had managed to catch on. "Fitch. You're talking about Alan and Margaret Fitch."

"That's when he offered me our deal. Our little non aggression pact. Well first, he threatened me. Carla and Jennifer were in WITSEC. He warned me that WITSEC was a government program and the Cabal _was_ the government. They could get to them. He told me he could keep his fellow Cabal members in check. He would make sure that they didn't come after me or … any more of my family, but I had to give him Margaret back."

Reddington shook his head. "I played along, but I hadn't taken Margaret and I had no idea who had.

"I was there at Alan's house, still dancing around the topic when Mr. Kaplan arrived with Margaret."

Reddington's hand stole to the breast pocket of suit jacket as he continued. "I only went to see Kate once at that facility to give her Annie's ring and then - " He looked regretful. "I didn't even know she wasn't there anymore."

He cleared his throat before continuing. "Kate was testing Alan. She took Margaret from their house late on a Thursday afternoon. Given his position in the government and the Cabal, Alan had a protection detail surrounding him day and night but there was no protection around Margaret. Kate left him an unsigned note instructing him to wait alone at the house for further instructions."

"She was going to have Alan trade himself for his wife?"

" _No."_ Reddington let that one word out in a breathy sigh before he went on to explain. "If he was willing to do _everything_ to get Margaret back, if he was willing to put his own life at risk by following her instructions and being there alone, she would kill Margaret while he watched and then kill him.

"If he ignored her instructions, if he went to ground, she would find him and just kill him."

A shocked Liz took a minute to puzzle that one out. "She would only kill the wife if she thought he really cared. If he didn't, she would let the wife live."

Reddington gave a nod.

"One of Mr. Kaplan's many marvelous talents - dear, sweet Margaret hadn't even realized that she had been kidnapped. Mr. Kaplan had arranged to bump into and befriend her weeks before. Margaret was just chattering away about what a marvelous weekend the two ladies had had in New York and all the Broadway shows that they had been to see. Margaret couldn't understand why Alan was so worried. She had left him a note."

"Which Mr. Kaplan had taken and replaced with her own." Liz seemed to have gotten one right because he didn't correct her.

"Margaret was sitting across from myself and Alan. Mr. Kaplan was behind her. Margaret never even noticed the gun in Mr. Kaplan's hand.

"Before she killed him, Mr. Kaplan was going to make Alan watch as she blew Margaret's brains out all over him just like the Cabal's people -"

Closing his eyes, Reddington couldn't finish.

Quietly, Liz suggested. "You talked Mr. Kaplan out of killing Fitch's wife."

 _"No."_ Reddington sounded slightly ashamed as he admitted. "I _wanted_ her to do it. I wanted her to pull the trigger."

He shook his head. "I don't know why she didn't but she didn't. She just turned around and left. I told Alan I accepted his terms and went chasing after her."

He swallowed. "It's not that Mr. Kaplan didn't know that it made no difference to kill one or a half dozen or even a dozen of the Cabal members – there was always someone to take their place. I think she wanted them to catch on. To come for her.

"She was too young when Annie got a hold of her. Kate was like a baby duck. She imprinted on her. Kate didn't know any better.

"They were together for more than twenty-five years – closer to thirty. Kate, she didn't know what to do with herself anymore. She'd always had Annie to look after and clean up after … and Annie was always there to look after her.

"That night, that's when I convinced Mr. Kaplan to start looking after me. I told her that we were the only two left. We needed to stick together. We needed to look out for each other and heavens knows if she felt the need for someone to clean up after, I could make a mess of things ..."

Reddington's face fell. "... and I have certainly made a mess of things this time."

Liz stayed there with him on the bench as he went quiet and stayed that way.

 _OOO_

The first time Kate had slept with a man she had cried after. _Immediately_ after.

Girls didn't have all the options then that they did now. If you wanted to start a family there was only one way to get it done.

Annie had been married once. She had had a child before, but Kate was younger. It seemed to make sense for her to be the one.

The poor young man had been so frightened by her tears. He didn't know what to do or what he had done wrong. He started apologizing thinking he had hurt her.

Together, she and Annie had spent weeks debating different candidates. Looks had been a factor, but intelligence, personality, and a sense of humor had carried more weight.

The man they had settled on had been more of an acquaintance than a friend and of course Kate hadn't been able to tell him why it was she was really inviting him home with her.

She had been so young and green. It hadn't seemed right to her – not just that he was a man, but feeling what she had for one person, but being with another.

When Annie heard her crying and came into the room, Annie hadn't understood. She hadn't tried to ask questions and Kate hadn't been able to _make_ her understand before Annie did something that she shouldn't have. Thankfully, height had also been one of the determining factors and landing on his shoulder, Annie's first blow with the heavy bookend from the shelf by the door hadn't even dazed him. He ran before she could get in another. Too afraid of what Kate might accuse him of in return, he hadn't gone to the authorities.

When it hadn't taken that first time Annie hadn't asked her to try again.

 _tbc_

A/N I'd really like to hear any thoughts.


	17. Waiting For You

_Waiting For You_

Donald was back. He joined her at Aram's station. "The good news is that Mr. Kaplan didn't wipe down the cabin."

"She missed a spot?" Liz asked.

"More like everywhere. She didn't even try. There were prints and DNA everywhere."

Liz wasn't so sure that was good news. It made her wonder and worry about what condition Mr. Kaplan had been in when she left the cabin.

Usually when there was good news, there was ... "What's the bad news?"

Donald's eyes flicked to behind her, towards the direction he had come from.

Turning around to look, Liz saw that he hadn't come back alone.

"I found him outside. Loitering."

Liz couldn't keep the exasperation out of her voice as now that his presence had been acknowledged, Tom approached. "I work at a blacksite. A secure government facility. You can't be loitering outside of my work, Tom."

"Well I tried loitering outside of our home, but you don't seem to live there anymore."

Liz glanced to Donald wondering what he might have told Tom on the way in.

Apparently nothing, but Tom caught the look.

"So _that's_ where you're staying? What now you're living with him?"

Tom turned on Ressler. "What exactly do you think you're doing with my wife?"

"Your wife? I'm having a little trouble remembering - did you actually get to the man and wife part before Solomon and his men showed up?"

Tom stepped closer - getting into Ressler's face. It looked like they might come to blows.

"Really?" An unimpressed Liz asked.

Samar still might not be speaking to her unless it was about work and even then only when absolutely necessary and as snippily as possible, but she was watching the show with undisguised interest. Only Aram had the decency to pretend to not be paying attention.

Trying to diffuse the situation, Donald told Tom. "She's staying in the guest bedroom. She couldn't stand being in that fake apartment with all of Agnes's things anymore."

Ressler suggested her and Tom relocate to the office he and Liz shared.

Liz just tried to dismiss Tom. "I can't deal with you right now, Tom. I just can't."

"Yeah, well, it's not all about you, Liz. Agnes is my daughter too. Tell me what's going on. _Let me help."_

Liz started to try to turn him away again. Touching her shoulder, Donald pointed out. "Liz, he is Agnes's father."

Tom did not look happy with the source of the help, but he took it.

Escorting them to the office, Donald told her. "I'll be right outside if you need me."

Stepping out, Donald made a point of not actually closing the door all the way.

Once they were alone, Tom again pleaded with her. "Liz, please just tell me. What is happening with the search for our daughter?"

Liz closed her eyes for a moment and took a breath before getting started. "Mr. Kaplan has Agnes."

Tom tilted his head. "I thought Reddington killed Mr. Kaplan."

"So did he, but apparently he didn't."

Tom smiled that disarming school teacher grin that had fooled her before. "She's alive! That's great, Liz! That's terrific! I know how upset you were about her."

Maybe she was being harsh, but Liz found Tom's enthusiasm unconvincing.

"Has Mr. Kaplan been in contact?"

"No. It's … complicated. Reddington shot Mr. Kaplan and left her for dead. Someone found her and nursed her back to health."

"Some good Samaritan."

"No." Liz shook her head and corrected him. "The man who found her, he wasn't exactly my idea of a good Samaritan." Or thinking of the good Samaritan killer she had once hunted, maybe he was. "Based on the autopsies of the bodies we found around his home, he was some kind of a sadist. He kept her prisoner and he – he -"

Liz didn't know what to say because she didn't know what he had done.

Sitting down at her desk, she pushed some of the autopsy files of the Woodsman's other captives over towards him.

Watching him flip through a few of the reports, thinking of what he had admitted to doing to Mr. Kaplan's friend Nikos, Liz couldn't help but wonder if to Tom it was more of an idea book - something to add to his Pinterest page - rather than the horror show it was to her.

She knew he would argue that he tortured Mr. Kaplan's innocent friend to try to get a lead on the whereabouts of their daughter, but a part of her couldn't help but wonder just how much or how little impetus Tom really needed to behave that way.

Putting the files back down, Tom looked like he didn't quite know what to say.

He got over it. "But she isn't there anymore. She can't be - not with Agnes. Has she been in contact?"

Liz shook her head.

"Okay." Tom nodded. "So we need to get in contact with her."

"Tom -"

"- Listen Liz, I know you are angry with me, but we can do this! We can find Mr. Kaplan and if we fine her, we find Agnes! She's been burned by Reddington. She can't go back to her old life. Maybe to find her we go back to her old, old life. We find out who she was before she became Reddington's trusty sidekick!"

Perhaps because the taskforce had already been down that road, Liz couldn't muster his enthusiasm.

"Tom stop."

"Hear me out, Liz. Let's put together everything we know about Mr. Kaplan. Mr. Kaplan can't be her real name, but when he is mad at her Reddington calls her Kate. Maybe that really _is_ her name."

Liz didn't say anything, but Tom kept going.

"Reddington and her, they go way back, right? How way back? Reddington was Naval Intelligence. Is she Naval Intelligence? Is she CIA? NCIS? JAG? KGB?"

Elizabeth wasn't really even listening as Tom spewed out his alphabet soup.

"Didn't you tell me you saw her do a field autopsy? Has she had some kind of formal medical training? Did she use to be a coroner at some point?"

Dully Elizabeth repeated a tidbit she knew. "She wasn't a coroner. She was sleeping with the coroner's sister."

Tom gave her a strange look, but didn't miss a beat before saying. "That's good, Liz. That's really helpful."

"No, it's not." Liz admitted. She knew it wasn't. She knew he was only saying it to encourage her because she had actually responded.

Speaking rapidly, Tom kept on. "I bet she was CIA. The CIA regularly used to recruit medical personnel and -

 **"- Tom** _ **just**_ **stop!"**

They both turned as the still ajar door was pushed open.

Liz expected it to be Donald coming in because of her raised voice, but it was just the mail clerk.

Liz was in such a fugue these days. She didn't really pay attention as the clerk handed her her mail.

By route habit, she opened it as she pressed Tom to leave.

"Please, just go. If we find out something, I'll tell you, but right now, we have nothing and I can't. I just can't."

Hoping he would leave if she ignored him and went back to work, she looked down at the letter she had just pulled out.

Liz gasped and cried out.

Tom looked at her. "Liz? What is it?"

 _OOO_

It was a different time.

When Annie had begun to show one of her smaller minded colleagues at the museum had asked if there was a Mr. Kaplan. Annie had answered back that of course there was a Mr. Kaplan.

After that in private and amongst their small group of friends Annie had taken to calling her Mr. Kaplan.

Kate had started the ring.

It was important to blend in. Not to draw attention to themselves. So she had bought one for Annie to wear. They agreed it was just a lark, a ruse, but even in the privacy of their own apartment Annie never took it off.

Annie had _all_ the symptoms. She was a textbook case, but Kate had her doubts even before sneaking Annie into the hospital for the ultrasound.

She told Annie that there was no heartbeat. She left out that there was no heartbeat because there was no baby – there never was.

Kate never told Annie the truth. She let her think she had had a miscarriage.

 _tbc_

A/N 6 chapters and an epilogue left to this and then a 20+ chapter sequel if you want it, but if you want it you have to feed me. Thank you to my one lone guest reviewer!


	18. High & Dry

_High & Dry_

 _"_ Weird. _Spooky_ weird. _"_

Aram's talking to himself got the attention of both Cooper and Samar.

"What did you find?" Samar asked Aram.

"An entire class of medical residents dead."

That managed to get even Ressler to pull his gaze away from his office where he had left Liz and Tom Keen. "What do you mean?"

"So I went back to take another look at the last place I thought Mr. Kaplan worked as a doctor. It was a long shot, but I thought if I could find some of her fellow residents, we could talk to them. It was a local hospital so I thought maybe there was a chance one of them kept in touch or at the very least, if they remembered her, they might be able to give us some insight into her."

"Okay ..."

"But they're dead. They're _all_ dead."

Cooper shrugged not terribly surprised. "It's been a _long_ time."

"No." Aram clarified. "I don't mean they died over the years. I mean they all died back then."

Samar offered a perfectly reasonable explanation. "We're they all together on a bus or a plane that crashed?"

She didn't get an answer.

With Ressler in the lead, the men all went rushing towards the sound, but Samar just rolled her eyes at the cry coming from Liz's office.

"What now?" Samar sighed as she took her time following.

 _OOO_

Liz was in such a fugue these days. She didn't really pay attention as the clerk handed her her mail.

By route habit, she opened it as she pressed Tom to leave.

"Please, just go. If we find out something, I will tell you, but right now, we have nothing and I can't. I just can't deal with you."

Hoping he would leave if she ignored him and went back to work, she looked down at the letter she had just pulled out.

As she gasped and then used the air that filled her lungs to cry out, Tom looked at her. "Liz? What is it?"

She let him take the hand written letter out of her hand.

 _Elizabeth,_

 _I can give you what you wanted for your daughter – a safe, loving home out of Raymond Reddington's reach. I just can't give it to her with you._

 _Don't torture yourself by looking for Agnes. I am very accomplished at disappearing people. Without Tom to leave a trail of breadcrumbs, this time Agnes will never be found._

 _All that is important is that Agnes is somewhere safe and loved. Hold onto that._

 _Grieve and move on._

 _Mr. Kaplan_

 _OOO_

Reddington read the short but not very sweet letter twice and then a third time before managing to speak. "No. It's … just … _no_."

Cooper pressed him again. " _Is_ it Mr. Kaplan's handwriting?"

The shaking of his head said no, but the look on his face said yes.

Reddington's expression, it reminded Elizabeth of an old B-movie she had watched with Sam as a girl. A science fiction one where the robot was given two conflicting pieces of information to process.

She felt almost detached from the situation as she watched Reddington waiting for the smoke to start pouring out of his ears as he malfunctioned.

Staring at the letter, he sounded utterly lost. "I don't understand what is happening. This doesn't make sense. _None of this_ makes sense."

When Liz took back her letter and started walking away, he snapped out of it.

Just like at Kirk's last hideout, he put back on a false air of bravado and gave her empty promises. "Lizzie, we will find Mr. Kaplan. We will get to the bottom of this. We will get Agnes back."

Having lost all confidence in him, sidestepping Tom's efforts to stop her, Liz just continued walking away.

OOO

Opening the door to his hotel room, Tom didn't know what to make of his visitor. "Scottie."

Closing the door behind him, he offered somewhat sarcastically. "Come in. Make yourself at home. My mini bar is your mini bar."

Crossing her legs, she looked at him sympathetically. "I heard about your daughter. I'm sorry. I know what you're going through."

"Yeah." Sinking into the chair across from her, Tom didn't know what to say. He knew Scottie was one of the few people in the world for which that was true. "I guess you really do."

"I want to do something to help."

"By all means." Tom agreed. "If you have any information -"

Scottie cut him and his false hope off. "- that's not what I meant. When we lost our son … when all the leads dried up, the only thing that helped me keep it together was throwing myself into my work. I came to offer you a job."

"I appreciate the offer, but I still have a lead."

But it was still the same lead they had been chasing since they found Mr. Kaplan's glasses in the nursery and it wasn't going anywhere. Reddington with his people and Cooper with his had both proven useless and unwelcoming of his help. Maybe, it was time to throw his lot in elsewhere.

"Scottie, there _is_ something you can do. I could use your help with that lead." Tom pleaded with her. "I need your help to find someone."

 _OOO_

Annie's husband had used his influence to make sure that Kate lost her position in her residency program when he found out about their affair, but Annie had lost so much more.

The idea had actually originated with Kate. As a girl when her family's dog had died her parents' solution had been to get her and her younger brother a new puppy. It wasn't a perfect fix even back then, but it had helped and quite frankly, she didn't know what else to do about the hole she had caused in Annie's heart and life.

Kate had caused the problem so it was up to her to fix it.

Kate wasn't nearly as particular the second time.

He was a married man she worked with. They met a few times a week in a rented room. When he asked why they couldn't use her apartment she gave Annie, her roommate, as an excuse.

It was an excruciating few months.

When he began speaking of leaving his wife she didn't think anything of it. It was after all a cliche – a promise men never followed up on.

As soon as she was sure she ended things. She rebuffed his every effort to get her to reconsider and managed to arrange a transfer to another hospital in the same city to avoid him.

When he sought privileges at her new hospital, despite it necessitating Kate once more restarting her program, Kate and Annie agreed it best to leave before her condition became obvious.

Kate thought cities were best. Small towns tended to be more observant with everybody knowing everybody and their business. And at least to Kate, they seemed less tolerant.

They didn't really have very many requirements in a city. They needed a place with a museum for Annie to work at and a teaching hospital for Kate, but other than that, the where hadn't mattered to Kate as long as they were together.

Going back to Boston was just asking for trouble. Her married doctor necessitated their leaving New York.

Annie was the one to suggest D.C. because her baby brother had recently come from Russia and settled there.

Annie's baby brother was only a few years older than Kate.

He stopped by the apartment a few times in the beginning. Dom was friendly enough towards Kate at the start, but he hadn't liked the idea of his sister having to have a roommate to make the rent. He wasn't doing good in the city, but he was doing quite well for himself at doing bad. He's offered to set his sister up in her own apartment.

Annie declined, but he kept offering every time he stopped by. When he finally put together what was really going on, he'd liked that idea even less.

He started visiting Annie at her work instead of at home so he could pretend to ignore Kate's existence.

They didn't tell him in advance about the baby. Knowing her predicament would cost her her position in her new residency program if anyone found out, Kate _tried_ not to let on to anyone.

The truth was that she hadn't really wanted a baby. But she had wanted Annie and Annie wanted a baby … So in the end everyone got what they wanted until …

Early one morning nearly half a year later he appeared on their new doorstep. He had hired someone to track her down.

When Annie answered the door he had barged his way inside to look for her.

It was two bedrooms with the baby in one bedroom and a double bed in the other. The math wasn't hard.

He called them names – horrible, vile names. He swore no child of his would be raised in such debauchery. When he gave her an ultimatum – he was leaving with her and the baby or he was leaving with the baby, Annie had panicked.

It was Ms. Kaplan in the kitchen with the frying pan.

Sawing him into more portable pieces in the bathtub, their child's father was the first person she ever disappeared.

A month later when a hysterical Annie called her at the hospital to say she couldn't get the baby to wake up from his nap, the part of Kate that remembered and maybe still even a little believed her Sunday school education couldn't help but wonder if it was their penance.

 _tbc_


	19. My Love For You

_Chapter 19_

 _My Love For You_

"Liz ..."

Aram had said her name so softly – it was almost as if he hadn't wanted to be heard. Turning around, she saw Aram standing there. Cooper was with him.

Seeing Aram's sad, scared puppy dog eyes, Elizabeth was at once apprehensive. She already felt so defeated. She didn't know what more she could take.

"What is it?"

"The FBI has your DNA on file." Aram looked down at his shoes. "It's only suppose to be for exclusionary purposes … for cross contamination of crime scenes ..."

"I know."

Aram cleared his throat before continuing. "When Agnes went missing Director Cooper asked that I put your DNA into the system to look for any _familial_ matches ..."

Liz was vaguely familiar with the investigative tool. When law enforcement had DNA left behind by a suspect at a crime scene but no _exact_ match could be found in their database, they would sometimes rerun the profile looking not for an exact match, but a partial match. In NY Liz had worked a case where a man with no previous criminal record was identified because his father's DNA was already in the system.

"… Only ..." Looking awkward, Aram's eyes strayed Cooper's way before coming back to her. "... I don't think Director Cooper understood the science behind what he was asking because familial matches are based on the Y chromosome – which I'm sure you both know only males have. So that would have been pointless to run to try to find a match between you and Agnes."

Liz tried to follow along as Aram really got going. "We get our nuclear DNA from all of our ancestors, matrilineal mitochondrial DNA, however, is passed down almost unchanged from from a mother to her children. Generation after generation it stays almost entirely unchanged from mother to daughter to her daughter and her daughter – maybe you've heard of mitocrondrial Eve? Do you watch PBS? NOVA did a fascinating special on her a few -"

Aram was straying too far into scientific gobbledygook that Liz didn't understand and couldn't hope to understand in her present mindset. She looked to Cooper.

He interrupted him. "Aram, get to the point."

"Right!" Aram looked apologetic. So what I did was I wrote a program to look for your mtDNA. I didn't find any matches, but ..."

Aram paused ... "I set the program to run every few days so that we would know if any new DNA was entered into the system that was a match and well … a match was just found."

DNA entered into their system was almost exclusively either that of a criminal or the victim of a homicide or some other violent crime. Elizabeth looked at him pleadingly. "Agnes?!"

Aram looked shocked. "Oh no. No! Not Agnes! Definitely not Agnes!"

Liz didn't understand where Aram was going.

Cooper tore the bandage off for them all. "Epithelial cells found at the Woodsman's cabin were a match to you."

Liz stared at him stunned a moment before finally managing to ask. "Where were the epithelial cells found?"

"The leg irons."

Elizabeth looked from Cooper to Aram. "Mr. Kaplan?"

"It seems most likely." Aram agreed. "I mean that would be one heck of a coincidence if it wasn't."

"Mr. Kaplan was my …?"

She didn't know how to finish the sentence.

"Once I had that match, I looked at the entire DNA profile. It wasn't close enough to be a sibling or a parent … but maybe a great aunt or a …"

Elizabeth thought of the woman who had gambled and lost so much to try to help her. "... my grandmother?"

 _OOO_

As soon as Mr. Kaplan closed the car door, before she even started the engine Tom popped up in the backseat gun drawn.

 _OOO_

It struck Kate as odd how attached she could get to something she hadn't even wanted in the first place.

Annie hadn't coped well with the loss of yet another child.

Kate had coped better but only because it didn't seem possible to cope any worse than Annie had and one of them had to keep it at least somewhat together.

Unwilling to leave Annie for the days at a time her residency program required, Kate had had to drop out … again.

Not at all ready herself, but needing Annie to not be unhappy and having no other idea how to make that happen, Kate had set out to get Annie another baby.

Only this time, Kate hadn't been willing to settle for just any baby. She had been determined to have Annie's baby – or the closest thing to it.

 _tbc_


	20. Shadows

_The House You Live In_

 _Shadows_

As soon as Mr. Kaplan closed the car door, before she even started the engine Tom popped up in the backseat gun drawn.

"You are going to take me to my baby right now or I am going to do to you what I did to your friend Nikos."

Looking at him via the rear view mirror she told him off. "You don't frighten me, Tom."

Tom reached into the front seat to take Mr. Kaplan's bag of tricks and disarm her. Seeing the way she tensed and the disgusted look on her face as he checked her person for a weapon, Tom made another threat. "Or maybe I'll do you like the Woodsman did."

Mr. Kaplan wasn't buying what he was trying to sell. "You're not the type."

Frustrated Tom grabbed her by the chin and pivoted her face so he could stick his gun to the unmarred side of her face. "So maybe I do you like Reddington did."

"You really think you can get off that lucky of a shot?" She reminded him. "I am the _only_ one who knows where your daughter is."

"Fat lot of good that is doing me right now." Tom pointed out. "So what's it going to be?"

Mr. Kaplan stared him in the eye before giving a resigned sigh. "All right, Tom."

"Where are we going?" Tom asked after they had been driving for a while.

"Not much farther." Mr. Kaplan promised him.

Just a few minutes later she was asking him. "Are you sure this is what you want, Tom? Because my way is better for everyone involved. Agnes is in a place where no one will ever know who she is. No one will ever be able to use her to get to you or Elizabeth or Raymond _ever_ again."

Pressing the muzzle of his gun hard against the back of her head so she could really feel it, Tom told her. _"Drive."_

 _OOO_

Bringing her flowers hadn't been a one time event.

Every morning she woke to flowers left next to her pillow.

It was an improvement from what she fell asleep to every night.

Included in today's mixed bouquet were a few flowering tops from wild parsnips. They looked similar to Queen Anne's lace, but having made that mistake one summer growing up in Nebraska, Kate could never make it again. After finding and picking an entire patch of it to put in jugs of water dyed different colors in the hopes of changing the color of the white flowers, her hands had erupted in painful, burn-like blisters from exposure to the sap in their stems and sunlight.

The blisters had taken a few weeks to heal, but the discoloration of her skin had taken more than a year to fade away.

Bringing her flowers ...

It was as if he thought they were in an actual relationship – or more accurately as if he wanted _her_ to think that he thought that they were in an actual relationship. As caring as he pretended to be, she couldn't seem to get away from the idea that that was all it was – pretending. She was quite sure that the two of them were both playacting and it was just a waiting game to see which of them would break character first.

She had solved the problem of a weapon, but she hadn't used it yet because she was still quite attached to the idea of keeping her foot. She still hadn't succeeded in finding the key on her own or in managing to get him to show her where he kept it.

She had been working on befriending the dog by clandestinely feeding him bits of food, but when she acted it would still need to be swift and without any warning if she didn't want him to get involved.

 _OOO_

He laced his fingers through hers as she let him push her down into the camp bed's mattress.

He wore his concerned expression like a hat that didn't quite fit as he stared into her eyes. "It doesn't seem right. Doing this, with _that_ on. We should take it off. Don't you think?"

Trying not to seem too eager, Mr. Kaplan just gave a little nod.

Pulling his entwined hand away, he slipped the ring off her finger before she realized that was what he was doing, what he was really referring to.

As he smiled down at her, for the first time, she had to really work to keep the horror off her face.

"It was time. Don't you think?"

He was right. It was time. She was just going to have to take her chances.

It looked like the foot was going to have to go.

 _tbc_


	21. Too Late For Prayin'

_Chapter 21_

 _Too Late For Prayin'_

"Where are we going?" Tom asked after they had been driving for a while.

"Not much farther." Mr. Kaplan promised him.

Just a few minutes later she asked him. "Are you sure this is what you want, Tom? Because my way is better for everyone involved. Agnes is in a place where no one will ever know who she is. No one will ever be able to use her to get to you or Liz or Raymond _ever_ again."

It wasn't a question he could even entertain. He _had_ to get Agnes back. Agnes was his daughter … and she was his way back home to Liz.

He pressed his gun forcefully to the back of her head. _"Drive."_

True to her word, a minute later, she brought the car to a stop. They were in front of a cemetery - the cemetery that Liz had supposedly been buried in. Mr. Kaplan turned off the engine.

Tom shook his head. "No! You told Liz -"

"- I know what I told Elizabeth." After stepping out of the car, Mr. Kaplan leaned back in to sadly admonish him. "I told you my way was better."

"I don't believe you!"

Tom scrambled to get out of the car and follow as Mr. Kaplan began slowly walking away.

Unconcerned about her, he said nothing about her limp or the cane she was using to help support her weight on one side.

There was no tombstone, just a statue without any name or words carved into it. The little stone angel looked old but the flowers that had been there before their arrival were fresh.

Stunned, it was all Tom could do to get the words out. "How?! What happened?!"

"Constantine - Kirk couldn't get to Liz to use her stem cells so he used what he had on hand. It was too much for little Agnes. To get the amount of cells Kirk needed, he ..." Pursing her lips, she shook her head and went silent.

"No!" Coming out of his stupor, Tom choked on his sob. Angrily, he started to lash out. "Reddington! This is all his -"

Kaplan stopped him before he could even get started. " _No Tom._ This is on _you._ _You_ were the one that let Kirk get a hold of that baby in the first place. I had Liz out and I was getting Agnes out! _You_ let him track you with that phone. What kind of a beginner mistake was that? Keeping that phone?"

Realizing she was right, oblivious to the pain, Tom turned and pounded his fist on a nearby marble grave marker – Liz's grave marker - again and again until he remembered who he was dealing with.

Hope flooded in to wash back out his despair.

Turning back to face her, he accused her. "I don't believe you! You're lying! Agnes isn't buried here! This is the same place where you _pretended_ to bury Liz! This is another one of your tricks! She isn't dead!"

Her eyes were shiny as they met his. "There are two shovels in the trunk. Don't bother bringing both. I'm not going to help. I'm through helping you, Tom."

Desperate, he tried to call her bluff. He came back with the shovel. Determined, he looked Mr. Kaplan right in the eye as he started.

But as soon as he bit into the ground with the shovel, he knew it was all true.

It was the desperate, inhuman sound that escaped Mr. Kaplan's throat before her hand could make it up to cover her mouth.

Letting go of the shovel, Tom sank to his knees convinced. " _Oh God!_ What am I going to tell Liz?"

" _Nothing."_ Mr. Kaplan instructed him. "You are not to tell Elizabeth anything!"

Tom shook his head. "How can I _not_ tell her?"

Mr. Kaplan countered. "How _can_ you tell her?"

Tom didn't have an answer.

"Elizabeth _never_ needs to know. Leave her with her hope, Tom. With her dreams for your baby girl."

Tom looked torn, but only for a moment. "You're right." Tom nodded and wiped at his runny nose with his bloody, broken hand.

Mr. Kaplan warned him. "Tom, if you love her, if you _truly_ love her, you'll keep your distance from her. One look at your face and Elizabeth will know."

Tom realized she was right. The full, true horror of the situation hit him. If he wanted to protect Elizabeth from the truth, he would have to walk away from her. "Oh God! Why did you bring me here? Why would you show me this?"

"I don't care about you, Tom." Mr. Kaplan admitted. "You're not my concern. You never were. I don't even like you. I never have. It was my idea and your screw up with the phone, but Raymond and Elizabeth, they didn't deserve this."

Tom agreed – or more accurately, he half agreed. "Liz doesn't deserve this."

 _OOO_

Kate wasn't ready to let the foot go. She was still very attached to it - after all, she'd had it for as long as she could remember.

So upon further consideration, she had decided _not_ to be the first to break character.

Instead, she would take a risk and make one last attempt to save the foot by seeing just how far he was willing to take his harmless woodland recluse act. She didn't need him to take the leg iron off and keep it off – she just needed him to keep playing the part of the concerned rescuer and move it to the other leg so that she could see where he kept the key.

After liberally, but carefully applying the sap from the stems of the wild turnips, she had had to sit on the floor to reach the sunlight that filtered through the gaps in the cabin's poor construction.

She had been creeping along chasing the sunlight for the better part of the morning.

She was taking a chance leaving the mattress where her weapon was hidden, but her latest hand-me-down skirt and blouse had no pockets in which to conceal her weapon and it wouldn't do to give the game away prematurely by being caught red handed. To use it, she would need the element of surprise.

Usually, she had some warning of his imminent arrival from the jangling sound of the dog's collar.

They'd never been given a proper introduction, but then she suspected that much like herself, the dog had never been given a proper name by her rescuer.

Today, he must have left the dog somewhere because today, his return came with no warning.

Seeing her on the floor with her ankle red and blistered in the area where the metal clamp went around her ankle, he put down his rifle and her latest bouquet to hurry toward her. "City mouse! What happened?"

Feigning ignorance, Mr. Kaplan said nothing. She just shook her head.

Leaning down, he examined her ankle as best he could with it half covered by the metal.

He admitted. "We need to get that off of you, but ..."

He looked at her with open admiration.

As he reached out to caress her cheek – her scarred cheek – with the knuckle of one finger, Kate found his what he made seem to be genuine affection wholly unsettling. "I've been searching, wanting to find someone like you for such a very long time. You're so small and you look like you would be so dainty, but you're not. You're just so full of grit. I don't want to risk losing you."

Kate forced down her revulsion to reply. "You won't lose me. I'm not going anywhere. Where would I go? I've been here with you all this time and no one has reported me missing or come to look for me."

Raymond hadn't even sent anyone to bury her or otherwise dispose of her body.

She found his smile at her answer chilling. "No, if they haven't noticed by now, no one is going to be coming looking for you."

Kate tried to further assure him. "I don't have anyone else. Just you."

Seemingly satisfied by that answer, he stepped back. He took the key down from a top a cabinet just out of her range - a cabinet so tall that even he had to reach up and blindly grope to find it.

As he left to retrieve it and while he was returning with it, he kept talking. "City mouse, there's something that's been bothering me for a while. Now I know I may be just a little old country mouse who doesn't understand these things, but ..."

His voice started out in that sickly sweet tone but then it changed. It started to have that cruel edge to it that Kate had detected a few times before – the times she should have cried out and didn't.

" … since when does a cleaning lady wear designer suits and Hermes -"

Her advantage of surprise wasn't just gone – she'd never had it.

Kate didn't wait for him to finish. Scrambling to her feet from the floor, she tried to dive back to the camp bed to where her makeshift weapon was hidden.

He still had the height and weight advantage.

He simply grabbed her tether and yanked her back. She had to make due with the only weapon at hand. Picking up the chain still attached to her foot, she wrapped it around his neck and darting behind him began to pull.

It was a little Princess Leia/Jabba the Hutt, but if you apply the proper pressure to the carotid artery, unconsciousness can occur in as little as seven to twenty seconds.

But he was a bit more mobile than Jabba. She dodged his first few enraged attempts to get her, but there was a reason that fighters were separated into different weight classes in boxing and mixed martial arts. Unfortunately for her, he only had to make contact once and it was over.

 _tbc_

A/N So my recent internet search history includes how long to strangle someone to achieve unconsciousness, how long does it take after death for the bruising caused by the process of burking to become apparent, and can cadaver dogs distinguish between a dead human body and a dead animal.

If I stop posting updates could someone kindly come post my bail?

As always, reviews would be greatly appreciated.


	22. Cold on the Shoulder

A/N Kudos if you can spot the Pet Sematary line.

Thank you all for the many kind reviews.

Akarensilla thank you very much for taking the time to go through and review all the chapters. That was a particularly nice treat.

 _Chapter 22_

 _Cold on the Shoulder_

Watching as Mr. Kaplan made her way back to the car alone, Scottie didn't miss the older woman's eye roll as she spotted Scottie inside the car.

Scottie waited for her to open the door and get in before she gave her a slow clap. "That little story you just told Tom – that was a terrific story. But it was just that – a story. I don't believe it."

Mr. Kaplan just stared ahead out the window. "Believe what you want."

"I don't believe it because you let me find you _far_ too easily."

"I'm old. I'm tired. I can't be constantly looking over my shoulder. I shouldn't have to be."

"You _let_ me find you for him so that you could tell him that little story ..."

Scottie tilted her head as she stared at the older woman sizing her up. " … because that was the only way he was going to give up looking."

 _OOO_

As he had most nights the past few weeks, Harold sat in his car waiting, watching the house.

Though a little out of practice at surveillance, he knew better than to stay so laser focused on his target that he wasn't vigilant of his surroundings. He spotted the private security company car that patrolled the neighborhood as it parked behind him part way down the street.

As the guard approached, Harold put down his window and without looking at his name tag addressed the man by name. "Good evening, Mr. Lewis."

The man, Caucasian and around Harold's own age, mimed the removal of an imaginary top hat. "And a good evening to you too, Assistant Director of the FBI, Harold Cooper. Still trying to put me out of a job I see. Any activity to report?"

Harold shook his head. "Nobody in. Nobody out. No signs of movement inside."

Harold turned the question back around on him. "How about you? Any activity to report?"

"Indeed and not _just_ activity, but _suspicious_ activity. It seems there that is a thirty to forty year old black male in a dark colored sedan casing the neighborhood."

Lewis turned and waved in the direction of one of the nearby houses. Harold saw the curtain rustle as the face peering out the window backed away.

Rather than focus on the negative, Harold went with the positive. " _Thirty to forty?_ Wait until I get home and tell my wife that one."

They shared a chuckle over that before Lewis asked. "You ever going to tell me what this is about?"

"I'm looking for a woman who used to live here."

Lewis looked dubious. "No one has lived here in a very long time."

"I thought there was a chance she might show up here."

"She in some kind of trouble?" He answered his own question. "Must be to have an _assistant director_ of the FBI staking out the place personally

Harold considered the question a moment before answering. "She's not in any trouble with me."

Harold asked. "What can you tell me about the history of the house?"

"Woman who owned it died. To be more precise – she was murdered. The house passed on to her daughter, but her daughter - and the other woman that lived here, they both dropped off the face of the Earth around the same time. Before you ask, I'm not sure if they disappeared by choice or foul play. It's been more than seven years many times over -"

Seven years was the length of time someone had to be missing to be declared dead baring any other compelling information.

"-but nobody has bothered to push it through probate."

Harold tried another angle. "The taxes are up to date. The lawn is being taken care of. The place doesn't look dilapidated. You're here. Who pays the bills?"

"Some corporation. Kaplan Enterprises. And before you ask – I have no idea what they make or sell or do."

Harold knew. "Kaplan Enterprises was a local risk assessment and management company. There were very big in the 70's and 80's. They showed other companies – mostly museums, banks, jewelery stores, and other soft targets – the flaws in their security systems and protocols."

"How not to get robbed?" Harold's new friend summarized.

"How not to get robbed." Harold agreed. "Have you ever met Kaplan of Kaplan Enterprises?"

"Can't say that I have."

"Who writes your checks?" Harold asked.

"No idea. Never actually seen one. It gets deposited electronically."

Cooper wasn't at all surprised. He mentioned what did surprise him. "I'm surprised the place has been allowed to remain vacant this long. It's a prime piece of real estate."

Surrounded by million dollar brownstones, the house looked out of place here. It reminded him of an old children's book about a house in the country which over the years was encroached upon by the city.

The security guard agreed. "Four bedrooms, three baths and an actual backyard instead of just sitting on a postage stamp sized lot in this area of DC? It's not for lack of people trying to buy it. I find offer letters taped to the door at least once a week. Every couple of years some politico tries to force a sale – eminent domain or some such, but the attorney always gets that shut down real quick. The inside could use some updating – pretty elegant for the time, I'm sure, but she's a time capsule."

Harold hinted as he had several times before. "I'd love to see it."

Only this time instead of his by now should be trademarked answer – ' _And with a properly signed and executed warrant you can'_ Lewis surprised him.

He stared at Harold a moment before pressing the button to speak into the radio he was wearing. "Lewis here." He gave the address for the Dupont Circle house. "Commencing weekly walk through."

Lewis gestured him out of the car. "You walk only where I walk and you touch _nothing_. Understood?"

"Roger that." Harold agreed.

It was only as he was getting out of the car that he considered that it might be a trap.

Still … he couldn't pass up the chance.

While Lewis was busy unlocking the door and wouldn't see, Cooper unbuttoned his holster to make it quicker to draw his gun if need be.

Once Lewis had the door open, Harold gestured him ahead. "After you."

On his way inside, Harold made sure to leave his prints on the door in several places.

All the furniture in the house was draped with sheets. A thick layer of dust covered everywhere. You could make out the footprints on the floor just as easily as you could in a light layer of snow. The only footprints were Lewis's from this pass and the weeks before – and now Cooper's own. It was obvious that no one was staying here or had been in recent memory.

They traveled from room to room following the already foretold path in the dust. Lewis – and Harold behind him – kept to the path traversing the center of each room, pausing only to fully inspect those places that had pipes that might leak and cause trouble.

Glancing from the doorway into one of the upstairs rooms, Harold wondered how often a young Liz had come to visit to justify turning one of the bedrooms into a nursery.

Looking through the other bedrooms and back downstairs, it wasn't precisely Pompeii - they weren't totally caught unaware. There wasn't laundry in the hampers or dishes in the sink, but there were too many things let behind. Important, valuable things.

Breaking his word just a bit, while Lewis was otherwise occupied checking the pipes in the bathroom, Harold had peeked under a drape on the wall in the upstairs hall. He wasn't sure which one he was looking at, but he was fairly certain that he had found one of the more than twenty renditions of Waterloo Bridge that Monet had made.

It didn't give the impression that any of the people once living here realized when they left that they would never be returning.

Coming back from the very impressive wine cellar, Cooper spotted the calendar in the kitchen. It was set to a month decades past.

By the amount of undisturbed dust, no one had been in here in some time … but it wasn't anything close to thirty years worth of dust. Harold asked about that.

"Every six months like clockwork, Mr. Devry has the piano tuned and gets some girls in to do a cleaning – he supervises them personally – but no one has lived here in a very long time.

Interest piqued, Cooper asked. "Gregory Devry?"

"You know him?"

Cooper side stepped the question. "When's the last time you saw or heard from him?"

Lewis paused to think about it. "Well, now that you mention it … the place _is_ a little over due for the six month cleaning."

Lewis clearly found that odd, but he soon shook it off. "I've worked this route eight years. The fellow I took over for, before he retired, had it for another fifteen. Neither one of us ever saw hide nor hair of anyone.

"Whoever it is that you're looking for, they aren't here and they haven't been here for a very long time."

Taking one last glance around, Harold had to admit defeat. "No. She isn't here."

 _OOO_

Elizabeth hadn't given any warning that she was coming. Seeing her expression, Dembe didn't say a word as he let her into the safe house and showed her into the room Raymond was in.

As she started to rant at Raymond, Dembe did that thing he did so well – he stayed in the room, but managed to fade into the background with the furniture.

"Mr. Kaplan is right. _I was right._ My first instinct was right. I should have stuck with the plan to put Agnes up for adoption."

"Lizzie no!"

"I don't know how I let you and Tom talk me out of it. It's the only way for my daughter to have a normal life."

"Lizzie, you can't do that. I won't let you do that!"

"You will. You have to."

"Lizzie, we will find Mr. Kaplan. We will get Agnes back."

"No. That's just it. I don't want you to ..."

"Lizzie -"

As she interrupted Raymond, there was a look of determination, of purpose in Elizabeth's eyes that Dembe hadn't seen in months. "- I will let you stay in my life. I will keep helping you with the FBI – but only on this one condition. You _don't_ look for Agnes anymore ..."

"- Lizzie no -"

"... Or my grandmother."

Raymond froze, but only for a moment before attempting a recovery. Dembe heard Raymond tell Elizabeth. "Mr. Kaplan isn't your grandmother."

Elizabeth countered. "DNA doesn't lie."

"No, but it doesn't tell the whole story either. Mr. Kaplan isn't your grandmother. Mr. Kaplan _gave away_ your mother _."_

 _OOO_

Regaining consciousness, Kate opened her eyes to find him sitting besides her on the bed.

He smiled down at her as he marveled aloud. "I _still_ can't believe I found you. Like _manna from heaven,_ you just appeared before me."

Her vision blurry, trying to move her hand to reach for her glasses, Kate realized that her problems had multiplied.

Now that they both had showed their cards, he wasn't taking any more chances. Not only was her leg shackled - he had shackled both her hands as well. The wrist shackles were connected to each other by a short chain – a chain made even shorter still by his threading of it through the bars at the head of the bed.

Retrieving her glasses from the nearby table, he put them on for her as he kept talking.

"You're older than _any_ of the others I've taken - by a lot. Those girls were in their thirties, a few were in their forties. Crying and begging, most of them broke before I could even get them to the cabin – and don't even get me started on those, what do you call them – _millennials."_

His smile broke wider as he … complimented her. "It just goes to show – they just don't make things the way they used to.

"They all broke so easily, but you, you're different. You're better. Stronger. I knew that as soon as I saw you out there in the forest. The way you dragged yourself through the dirt to get to that stream. The way you just _refused_ to die despite being shot in the head …

"I knew right then that you were the one for me. That you would be the challenge I had been looking for. And when I saw all those old injuries –" His tone was just full of admiration. "I almost couldn't believe it. That wasn't even the _first_ time you were shot in the head …

"I knew I had to get you back up to full strength and now, here we are ..."

 _OOO_

They were no longer in the spoon feeding stage of their relationship.

She was fairly confident that the only reason she was still alive was her steadfast refusal to cry out. He simply couldn't kill her until she gave him the reaction he needed.

He tried hard – he tried so _very, very_ hard, but she simply wouldn't do it.

He had managed more than once to cause her to lose consciousness from the pain, but his little city mouse - as he was so fond of calling her - hadn't made as much as a squeak.

She knew if she did, it could, it _would_ all be over.

She just wasn't sure why she kept holding out.

Sometimes dead was better.

 _OOO_

The only time she was back down to just the leg shackle was when she was sent to the poor excuse for a bathroom to clean herself up. He preferred a fresh canvas to work on.

On the plus side, it meant that the key now had to come out with some frequency. She just wasn't sure if the leg and the wrist shackles used a common key.

"I know what you're thinking. These are overkill. They really are." He admitted as he unlocked the shackles around her wrists.

He was a talker.

Kate kept still offering him no response, but that didn't stop him from continuing to talk as he backed up out of her range before turning his back on her to go put the key away atop the cabinet just out of her reach.

With these particular shackles, he needed the key to open the shackles, but not to close them.

"Even when it was just the leg shackle, you weren't getting away. Even if by some miracle you had gotten out of it, you wouldn't have made it out of these woods. You might have been able to outrun me, but ..."

Kate rubbed at her wrists trying to speed the restoration of feeling as he went on.

"... you weren't going to be able to outrun him."

He gestured at the dog laying on its bed.

"He'd have brought you back to me, but ..." He assured Kate. " … I don't think you'd care to _see_ what he does to _anything_ running when I say ' _fetch'_ never mind _be_ it."

At the command, the dog's ears had pricked up and he stood expectantly.

The key safely tucked away and having hinted to her about what his dog did to moving prey, he sent her on her way. "Go on now. What are you waiting for? Get yourself cleaned up. I have plans for you this afternoon and I am just _raring_ to get started."

Kate stood.

She wasn't too concerned about being mistaken for anything running. He had done something to her ankle when he had used the chain like a leash to wrench her backwards. It wasn't healing right. She still couldn't put proper weight on it – not that she had been given much opportunity.

Despite his obvious upper hand, he was still cautious. When she returned – not quite fresh as a daisy - he instructed her to put back on her own restraints.

Picking up one of the shackles, before it got to her wrist Kate deliberately made it close on itself.

The look he gave her wasn't a happy one, but the expression she offered him was the picture of shock.

He retrieved the key again.

He started to approach her, but partway there, he reconsidered.

He diverted to the bathroom area instead.

As soon as he was out of view, she leaned over to the far side of the bed and put the contraband she had smuggled out of the bathroom partway under the mattress.

He came back looking quite pleased with himself – as if he thought that he had outplayed her again.

"City mouse, what did you think? Did you really believe that I wasn't going to notice that toothbrush missing right away? Did you think that I would let you keep it long enough to what – to make something of it? To sharpen it into a weapon?"

He looked disappointed with her. "City mouse, I thought you realized by now ... this _isn't_ my first time.

"Now where is it?"

Kate said nothing.

" _City mouse_ ..." He drew the two words out menacingly. "Do you know what I'm going to do to you if you don't tell me where it is?"

Kate doubted it could be any worse than what he would do to her if she did tell him where it was.

He wasn't looking amused anymore. He sounded ferocious as he stood towering over her. He wasn't concerned because he had only left her alone for a minute. She hadn't had time to sharpen the toothbrush into any kind of weapon. "Where is it? I'm not going to ask again."

Kate made her eyes dart in the direction of the far side of the bed's mattress where she had just put the toothbrush.

He hummed his approval of what he interpreted as her fear of him.

Turning his head, he could see the toothbrush peaking out from under the mattress.

He was back to being chatty as he leaned across the bed to reach for and grab the toothbrush – turning his back on her in the process. "That's what I like about you, city mouse. You just don't give up. You -"

He was right – it would have taken time to sharpen the smooth plastic of the toothbrush into a shank … but she already had the long stiff piece of metal she had broken off from the support frame of the camp mattress ready and waiting since before their previous little tete-a-tete.

The toothbrush was a simple misdirect.

This wasn't her first time either.

The metal was thin and long like a knitting needle or a skewer and skewer it did. As he leaned over, she pulled it out of it's hiding spot in the mattress and jammed the wire into his ear canal and up as far as she could get it to go.

Not some ingenue, rather than step back to wait and see his reaction, she held onto the end and jiggled it trying to maximize the damage.

When he jerked and she lost her grip on the skewer, she picked up the toothbrush that he had dropped. She jammed that in the other ear for good measure. The end wasn't sharp and jagged like the wire so it didn't make it in nearly as far, but it felt satisfying nonetheless.

It wasn't until the dog got curious about the commotion and got up off its bed that she put some distance between them.

The dog started off by sniffing at him, but as he continued twitching on the ground, the dog soon graduated to whining and pawing at him.

Once she was sure he was dead, she stepped over him for the moment of truth …

She picked up the key he had dropped.

It wasn't a match.

 _OOO_

She would need something to cut through the bone. Whatever possible usable tools that were in the kitchen area were in the kitchen area.

They might as well have been miles away.

Looking around, Kate's gaze paused on her captor's idea of storage that doubles as decor. A bear trap was propped up on a shelf. Out of her reach, but not _that_ out of her reach.

It was oval and the sharp points of metal that lined it certainly looked up to the task.

Standing at the end of her tether and casting out one end of the wrist shackles and their chain repeatedly like a fishing pole, she managed to knock it off the shelf and into her reach.

All she would need to do was place the open trap down on the floor and step on it. Not as clean of a cut as a guillotine – it might take a few tries to cut through all the ligaments and the bone – but it would work.

For all his cruelty, even her captor had never thought of doing this. What did it say about her that her mind had gone there?

Or perhaps, they just hadn't progressed that far in their relationship yet.

After setting up the trap and preemptively applying a tourniquet, Kate glanced around one last time hoping some other solution had magically appeared.

It hadn't.

Bracing herself, she counted down.

 _Three ..._

 _Two …_

 _One …_

 _tbc_


	23. I Want To Hear It From You

A/N To my unhappy guest – I'm glad that the Liz in this story seems like an ass because that is exactly how I intended to write her. As for that being out of character, you and I will just have to agree to disagree.

 _I Want to Hear It From You_

Liz interrupted him. "- I will let you stay in my life. I will keep helping you with the FBI – but only on this one condition. You _don't_ look for Agnes anymore ..."

"- Lizzie no -"

"... Or my grandmother."

 __Reddington froze.

Recovering, he told her. "Mr. Kaplan isn't your grandmother."

Liz countered. "The DNA doesn't lie."

"No, but it doesn't tell the whole story either. Mr. Kaplan isn't your grandmother. Mr. Kaplan _gave_ your mother away."

Liz was momentarily shocked and lost, but then she put it together. "To Annie. Mr. Kaplan gave my mother to Annie."

Reddington hesitated but unable to find a way out, he finally nodded.

"And then what?" Liz demanded. "Mr. Kaplan gave my mother to Annie and then she walked away?"

 _"No."_ Reddington made the two letter word into a long sigh. "Kate could never have walked away from Annie."

"So Mr. Kaplan gave my mother to Annie and … " Liz realized that her mother and Mr. Kaplan sharing the same name was no coincidence. " … Annie named my mother after Mr. Kaplan."

That at least Reddington was willing to concede without a fight.

Liz was so far beyond merely frustrated. She glared at him. "You lied to me!"

Reddington responded immediately and vehemently. "I have _never_ lied to you."

Liz thought back to the cemetery. She thought about the woman in Mr. Kaplan's grave – the one with the hair so blonde that Liz had mistaken it for white. She remembered feeling sick to her stomach watching as Reddington had checked the woman's torso for Mr. Kaplan's Caesarian scar while describing how Mr. Kaplan's baby had been taken from her - how her mother had been stolen from Mr. Kaplan.

Only it wasn't true.

"That whole story about Mr. Kaplan being in the hospital and her baby being ripped out of her, you made it all up."

Reddington shook his head. "I didn't make it up. That doctor _cut_ your mother right out of Kate to give to those people. Brimley and Annie's brother, they _did_ take a couple of baseball bats to those two men."

Liz was losing patience with him. "But they got Mr. Kaplan's baby back from the couple."

Reddington scoffed. "Dom and Teddy had nothing to do with getting your mother back."

As he continued, Liz was startled by just how absolutely outraged he sounded not about Mr. Kaplan's baby being stolen but about events that had preceded that. "Annie didn't _lend_ Kate out to get _pawed at_ time and again and then wait eight months for some other woman to get _her_ prize from the bottom of the Cracker Jack box!"

Liz was aware that at the time there weren't the more clinical methods of intervention that there were now – just the old fashioned delivery method. Still, her eyes swam with tears at the imagery so less flowery than his previous story of how her mother came into existence.

"Annie stole Katarina back before that other woman even set eyes on your mother. Those two men, they were an afterthought. That wasn't about getting your mother back. That was the principle of the matter after what they did to Kate."

Liz blinked back her tears to continue confronting Reddington. "I asked you if Mr. Kaplan ever got her baby back. You lied to me."

"I didn't lie to you. I _didn't_ answer. I told you I didn't know _how_ to answer."

Liz was infuriated. "It wasn't a trick question!"

"I didn't know how to answer because I don't know that Katarina would ever have agreed that Kate got her back. Kate isn't your grandmother because she was never Katarina's mother."

Reddington wasn't making sense.

"Mr. Kaplan stayed. You say she gave my mother to Annie to raise, but Mr. Kaplan stayed. They raised her together. How would that _not_ make her my grandmother?"

"Annie _was_ Katarina's mother. Annie _was_ your grandmother. _Not_ Kate."

They were talking fifty years ago. Given the different period they lived in, Liz realized maybe they both couldn't have _claimed_ to be her mother's mother, but ...

Liz shrugged. "They were both there. So they are both my grandmother."

"No." Reddington insisted. "Kate's _not._ Annie _was._ "

"Why can't they both be my grandmother?"

"Because that's _not_ the way it _was_. Because Mr. Kaplan doesn't see it that way. I told you, Kate _gave_ your mother to Annie."

"I don't understand."

Reddington shook his head. "I can't make you understand."

"Try." Liz insisted giving him an ultimatum. "Or I walk out that door."

"I can't make you understand it because _I_ don't understand it. Your mother didn't understand it. There's just this _disconnect_ in Kate's mind. There always was. It drove Katarina mad. Kate always looked after me, looked after you because we _were_ Annie's."

Frustrated by his obstinacy, Liz found something else to fault him for. "Why did you tell me that my mother told you that she thought that Annie killed Mr. Kaplan's son?"

"Because you refused to drop it and that _is_ what Katarina told me."

"No." Liz shook her head. "I can't believe that Mr. Kaplan would have given Annie another baby if she thought that Annie had done anything to harm the first one."

Reddington expression's was downcast as he started. "When I first came into Kate and Annie's lives, Kate and I didn't have the best of relationships. Kate didn't … trust me - rightfully so."

Reddington looked regretful, ashamed even as he admitted. "I did anything and everything I could to come between them, to cause trouble for Kate.

"For the longest time, Kate _hid_ your mother's existence from me.

"It was easy enough to do. Katarina was in school in Russia – or at least that's what she told everyone she was doing – and if anyone slipped up and mentioned her it was easy enough to explain away because Kate and Katarina had the same name.

"One of the last times I saw Kate before I finally met your mother, I was being cruel. I made a comment, a barb – about it being a good thing that lesbians couldn't have children because I couldn't fathom what a child of the two of them would be like – the child of a narcissist and a sociopath.

"Katarina was ..." The way he said the word, the expression on his face, it was like just the memory of her took his breath away. " … _astonishing_ , but it was hard sometimes to tell if what Katarina was telling me was the truth or if she was telling me what she thought I wanted to hear because she knew that I was still so angry with Kate and Annie - but I _never_ doubted that she _hated_ that baby."

Liz frowned confused. "You said he was only a few months old when he died and my mother came after. She never would have met him."

"Katarina didn't need to meet him to hate him. She blamed him."

Liz wasn't following. "Blamed him? For what?"

"For Kate giving her away."

"But she didn't give her away." Liz argued.

 _"Yes! She did._ " Reddington insisted. "Kate abdicated any and all rights she ever had to your mother."

"That's not fair. That's -"

A frustrated Reddington interrupted her. "- You hear me, but you're _not_ listening to me! You never saw the way your mother would _twinge_ every time Kate would say the words _._ "

"What -" Liz started to ask what words, but Reddington spared her.

 _"_ 'Don't take _your mother's_ car, take mine. _Your mother_ was looking for you. _Your mother_ just went upstairs.'"

Liz stared at him not sure of what to say.

"You didn't see the look on your mother's face at the hospital after you were born when Annie was holding you and Katarina asked Kate if she wanted to hold you."

Reddington's brow creased in disbelief. "Kate said _no_. She said you looked content where you were."

Startled by the implication, Liz questioned him. "You were there? At the hospital where I was born? I thought I was born in Russia?"

Still looking bewildered at Mr. Kaplan's answer even after all these years, Reddington didn't seem to hear her question.

"Kate was perfectly happy to just watch some _other_ woman hold her grandchild."

Reddington closed his eyes. His expression looked pained as he said it again – this time without the scorn. "Kate was _perfectly_ happy."

Reopening his eyes, he looked at her as he told her. "At the hospital, I took you ..."

Liz stared at him apprehensively waiting for him to go on.

"... I took you from Annie's arms. _I_ held you before Kate did because she was _never_ going to take you away from Annie. _I_ put you in Kate's arms."

Given Kirk's words about Reddington stealing her from her parents, that wasn't where she thought he was going to go with that.

Liz was … disappointed.

But then Kirk with his accusations of an affair - complete with what she realized now surely had to have been a faked diary – though faked by Kirk or faked by her mother, Liz didn't know - had been wrong about many things about her mother's relationship with Reddington – hadn't he?

Liz stopped trying to argue the point that Mr. Kaplan was her grandmother for a moment and paused to really consider what Reddington kept insisting.

When Reddington had told her that he didn't believe her mother when she said that Mr. Kaplan's girlfriend had killed Mr. Kaplan's son - that children often made up stories to explain things they didn't understand …

Liz had made up a story of her own.

Since Reddington, who always knew everything, didn't know how Mr. Kaplan's son had died Liz assumed that there wasn't a cause to know. Three to six months was an age that was prime for SIDS. Liz had filled in the blanks and jumped to the conclusion that her mother, a young child, was trying to make sense of how another child could die with no explainable cause … but maybe that had been the wrong conclusion to jump to.

"My mother wasn't trying to explain how another child could just die with no reason. She was trying to explain why her own mother had given her away."

Reddington nodded. He looked pained as he spoke. "Katarina told me she thought Annie got rid of him because Kate paid too much attention to him. He was starting to like Kate more than he liked Annie. She thought that that was why Kate always kept her at arm's length – to protect her."

Liz pointed out the obvious. "But she wasn't there to know any of that."

"No. She wasn't." Reddington agreed.

She asked. "Do you really think that my mother believed that Annie did that?"

"What you have to understand was that Katarina was like quicksilver. She would tell me one thing and then the very next time I saw her she would tell me something different. Something that directly contradicted the thing she said before. She would tell me things that were demonstrably false."

"Like what?" Liz half asked, half demanded.

"One week it was that Kate had grown fed up with Annie years ago. She wanted to leave, she would have, but Annie was too dependent on her. She felt responsible for her.

"The next week it was that Annie didn't want to be with Kate anymore. The only reason she had stayed with Kate all those years was because to leave would be to admit that she made a mistake all those years ago in picking Kate over -"

Reddington looked away without finishing.

Liz had gone over every bit of the file Aram had amassed. She had read every word of the court transcripts. Liz wondered if he didn't know all the circumstances, if he didn't understand that his mother hadn't had a choice in letting him go, or if to him it just didn't matter.

Reddington took a shaky breath before restarting.

"None of it was true. I have _never_ known two people more in love. Katarina knew that a part of me wanted, needed them to be unhappy and she tried to play on that.

"Katarina would tell the most outrageous lies, but she would usually make sure to include at least a grain of truth to keep me coming back for more."

"What was the grain of truth?" Liz asked.

Reddington's expression turned slightly sour. "She showed me where Annie hid her scrap books so Kate wouldn't find them. If they gave out awards for stalking Annie would have taken top prize. She didn't just have my high school and college graduation announcements, she had clippings from my little league days and even from the time I took second place in a pie eating contest on Nantucket when I was twelve.

"She must have subscribed to every newspaper in every city I ever lived in. She even had the engagement and wedding announcements that ran in Carla's parents' hometown newspaper."

Liz stated the obvious. "Your mother loved you."

" _No._ Marvin loved his son. When you love your son, you don't just clip out newspaper articles about him. When you leave, you take him with you."

Liz knew better than to try to point out how well that advice had turned out for Marvin or his son.

Rather than wade into that quagmire, Liz demanded more information about her mother. "What else did she do? What other things did my mother tell you?"

Reddington seemed to cast about for a minute before settling on another memory. "Your mother was newly married to Constantine when I finally met her. She had been living in Russia. They didn't tell her when Kate got sick. Kate didn't want to disrupt her studies. She wanted to let her finish before telling her. She told me she only found out when Kate showed up the week before the wedding looking like -"

Reddington broke off shaking his head.

"But when it was about Annie, Kate had her on the very first plane back here."

His expression went sour again as he pointed out the inconsistency.

"Kate was through with having the chemo and radiation. It didn't matter anymore. Either the last round worked and the cancer was gone or her body wasn't going to be able to take another round. She was too weak. She couldn't look after Annie on her own."

Liz waited for him to specify what was wrong with Annie, but he didn't.

"Your grandfather offered to step in to help, but Katarina didn't trust any of them to keep her informed. She sent Constantine back to Russia to tend to his budding business empire, but she decided to stay, to move back home for a time to help out and keep an eye on them.

"A month or so into her stay, Katarina called me. Kate had taken Annie to a late afternoon doctor appointment. The four of us were suppose to have dinner at the house that night. Katarina told me to come over early to help her make dinner. I knew what that really meant - I would cook dinner while Katarina at best sat on the counter watching or at worst ate the ingredients as I chopped them. Instead, she just disappeared upstairs. She came back with a towel on her head.

"Katarina's hair was the same color as Annie's. Not just red, but the exact same shade.

"She told me a story about when she was a little girl. About when they first came back to D.C. Annie didn't want anyone to _ever_ question the idea that Katarina was her daughter so the night before Katarina was going to start preschool Annie dyed her hair to match Annie's … and Kate just let her.

"She took the towel off and the red was gone."

Liz remembered the struck look on Reddington's face when she had dyed her hair blonde while they were together on the run. "It was blonde, wasn't it? My mother was a blonde."

"No." Shaking his head, Reddington denied it. "She wasn't a blonde. She _was_ a redhead. She changed her hair color just to tell me that made up story."

Liz just stared at him unsure of what to think or say.

"The first time I saw her, I couldn't stop staring at her. I couldn't get over how much she looked _just_ like Annie. But … she looked nothing like Annie without her red hair. Without the red hair, she didn't look like Kate or Annie. She just looked like her own person."

Reddington frowned. "I would usually take out the kitchen trash as I was leaving after dinner. I would put it in the outside bins on my way to my car. That night I was distracted. I forgot, but Katarina didn't. As I was leaving she chided me about it. I went to grab it. The box for the blonde hair color was just sitting at the top of the trash for me to see. She didn't even try to hide it."

Liz didn't find that to be the smoking gun that Reddington did. "Just because she dyed her hair back to blonde doesn't mean she wasn't a blonde. It takes time for colored hair to fade on its own."

Besides, what were the chances that her mother would naturally have the same uncommon hair color as a woman she wasn't biologically related to?

Unless …

Knowing Mr. Kaplan's meticulousness for details, Liz didn't dismiss the possibility that she had deliberately sought out a man that shared features with the woman she really wanted to be having the child of. In fact, as soon as the idea occurred to her, Liz was convinced of it.

"Katarina wasn't a blonde. She _was_ a redhead. Your grandfather had a picture of your mother as a baby on his desk."

Liz interrupted. "He wasn't just something you made up? I really had a grandfather? My mother really had a father? He wasn't just one in a succession of creeps picked up in bars for a one night stand for Mr. Kaplan to try to get pregnant?"

A desperate Liz held her breath after asking.

Reddington shook his head. "He wasn't _just_ a creep. I told you, he loved your grandmother very much. He knew she wanted a baby and he wanted her to be happy."

Liz couldn't explain why it mattered, but it mattered.

Liz wanted to believe him, but she knew that Reddington told stories. She admitted aloud. "I don't believe you."

Reddington reached two fingers into the little pocket of his vest. They came out with a jumble of jewelry – a gold chain with a heart shaped locket and a wedding band.

Liz recognized the ring from the cabin. "That's Mr. Kaplan's ring."

"No, it isn't."

Liz started to get testy. "I saw you pick it up at the cabin."

"It's not Kate's. It's Annie's. Kate bought it for her. Annie was too self centered to actually think to give Kate one in return."

Liz wasn't there to play semantics. "It's the ring that Mr. Kaplan always wore."

Liz didn't think that Reddington of all people should have it. She went to reach for it, but Reddington quickly tucked it back into his vest pocket.

He tried to distract her with the other piece of jewelry before she could object.

"Your grandfather gave this to your mother when she was a little girl."

His attempt worked.

Liz stared at the locket. It looked like it had seen better days.

"That belonged to my mother?"

Liz didn't understand why Reddington would have a necklace given to her mother as a child.

Reddington nodded and turned the locket so that she could read the inscription.

As Liz reached a hand forward to take it, a flash of panic crossed Reddington's face. For a moment, Liz thought he wasn't going to let her have that either.

But then he did.

Liz ran her finger along the inscription that was still legible if you knew the language. Liz only recognized her mother's name.

Reddington translated the rest for her.

"To Katarina Love Papa."

Liz didn't ask why Reddington was carrying around her mother's childhood necklace like a talisman. Blinking back tears, she just clutched it tightly.

Reddington continued with his story.

"In the picture on your grandfather's desk, Katarina was only a few months old, but she already had a full head of the most unruly hair. Red hair. A baby's hair is too delicate. Not even Annie would have been unsensible enough to try to use dye on it."

Still holding the locket, Liz asked. "Why would my mother dye it blonde? Why not dye it a darker color to look like Mr. Kaplan's?"

Reddington shook his head. He didn't have an answer for her. "Katarina was a wild card. There wasn't always a rhyme or reason to the things she did."

Liz turned it over in her mind. Reddington had once told her that he was sure that he had met Mr. Kaplan as a child, but that he couldn't for the life of him remember her ...

Liz thought of someone else's hair that would have been too delicate to use hair dye on.

"You said Mr. Kaplan couldn't pull off the bald look. What color was her hair when it started to grow back in?"

"Kate wore a wig once her hair started to fall out. I only saw her once without it. She was only a few weeks out from her last chemotherapy and radiation treatments so there wasn't very much. It looked like the fuzz on a peach.

"Before it fell out, her hair had been brown with just a touch of white at the temples. Her new hair came in all white. She was closer to forty than fifty, but it came in all white."

Liz put the chances that Mr. Kaplan's hair had regrown in all white when she was only in her forties at about the same chance that her hair had naturally been all brown with sometimes and sometimes _not_ just a touch of white while in her seventies.

Liz had a theory on why her mother would have dyed her hair blonde and why Reddington couldn't remember a young Mr. Kaplan, but she didn't say anything. She was here to get answers not give them.

Besides, he was already moving on.

"Katarina was just toying with me. Eventually, I caught on to that. I came to realize that your mother didn't like me, didn't want me there. She was toying with me, but she was the only one who knew things and would talk to me about them so I had no choice but to play her games. To take what I could get from her."

Liz didn't bother to point out the irony of _him_ complaining about that _to her._

"What do you mean she didn't want you there?"

"Katarina had been raised by a narcissist to be a narcissist. She may have known she wasn't an only child, but she was accustomed to being treated like one. It was enough to grow up with the specter of us. She didn't want to have one of us actually there. She wasn't interested in sharing Annie's – and _certainly_ not any of Kate's – time and attention or affection."

Reddington chewed at his lip. "I think at first, she only had anything to do with me beyond what she absolutely had to considering the situation because her handler thought that I might have useful information."

Liz had picked up on Reddington's earlier comment about her mother 'telling' everyone that she was in school. "She was already a spy."

Reddington nodded.

"Eventually as we continued interacting with each other, as our relationship continued, her interest and affection for me became real … I think."

Liz pointed out. "You still haven't answered my question. Do you really think that my mother believed that Annie killed Mr. Kaplan's baby?"

"Kate and Annie, they both grew up on farms, but they were such very different people. Kate is reserved. She's cautious and methodical. Annie was rash. For as long as I've known her, Kate has always been slightly aloof, guarded. She was never a very tactile person. Annie wasn't like that at all.

"If you said you thought you had a fever and you asked if you felt warm, Annie would kiss you on the forehead to check. Kate would hand you a thermometer. They were just very different people.

"I think Katarina just read too much into that."

Liz wanted to be sure. She needed to be absolutely certain. "You didn't believe her."

"I think that Katarina _wanted_ to believe. To have a reason why Kate was the way that she was."

"But you don't think Annie hurt Mr. Kaplan's son."

"No." Reddington said it calmly but definitively. "I believe that there was a baby and that he died, but ..." He shook his head in disbelief. "If … _if_ it was Annie's fault I know it _couldn't_ have been deliberate."

 _Deliberate._

The distinction didn't escape Liz as Reddington went on.

"Annie was flighty. She was impulsive and irresponsible. She could be volatile – every time I see Brimley dragging around that damn oxygen tank I am reminded of that – but never towards a child."

Liz thought of the memories – wondrous to him – that Reddington had shared with her of his mother. One hundred and one cookies and spending the entire day from opening to close at an art museum did seem harmless, but a beautiful woman alone with a young child wandering miles of shore and taking rides from strangers? Being taken out of bed in the middle of the night to go stargazing? Of laying on the sand. Or the grass. Or the _snow_.

Liz couldn't help but think of the things that could have gone wrong.

Liz could perhaps understand Reddington's father's frustration and concern about the inadvertent dangers his wife might have been exposing their son to. While she didn't agree with what he had done after, Liz could understand why he had felt the need to hire a nanny to supervise his son and his wife.

According to the records Aram had uncovered, Mr. Kaplan's attempts to finish her training to become a doctor had been derailed more than once. She was already using a fake name, but it had been consistently the same fake name allowing her to retain some of her progress from program to program and allowing Aram to trace her as she had stopped and started and restarted her training numerous times before finally going off the grid entirely.

Liz wanted to know why Mr. Kaplan had given up on having a respectable life and turned to one of crime.

Reddington had offered up a few different explanations as to why Mr. Kaplan might have abandoned the idea of being a doctor but none had been terribly convincing.

Liz wondered if this was the answer.

Had Mr. Kaplan, like Reddington's father before her, come to the conclusion that Annie needed more supervision than she could provide while working such long hours?

Knowing that Reddington didn't have anything useful to offer on that topic and having gotten the idea that Mr. Kaplan and Annie hadn't volunteered the information to her mother, Liz changed the subject by asking a question. "How did my mother figure out that Mr. Kaplan was her mother, not Annie?"

"Your mother was a clever little girl and your grandfather -" Reddington shook his head. "- let's just say _he's_ where your mother and you both got your tempers."

Liz kept quiet and just listened.

"Katarina's father wasn't allowed to tell her who he really was. He was always a part of her life, just _not_ as her father. That was the arrangement everyone had agreed to. It worked for a while because your grandfather was the only real father figure in your mother's life, but then … Kate's brother came to town.

"Katarina tricked your grandfather into admitting that he was her father."

Liz picked at what he was saying.

"Tricked him how? What was she told about her father? Mr. Kaplan and Annie must have told her something."

"Annie was as cliché as they come. She told Katarina that her father had died in the war. What war that was suppose to be, I don't even know."

Not for the first time, Liz noticed that Reddington seemed to put the blame on Annie for just about everything Mr. Kaplan and Annie did.

"Katarina set him up perfectly. According to Katarina, she waited until everyone was at the house together having dinner. She pulled out a paper from her school bag about an event at her school – a father daughter dance. Katarina announced that her teacher had said that since she didn't have a daddy she could pick someone else – a grandfather or an uncle, a neighbor or a family friend to bring."

That was a familiar old wound for Liz. She couldn't help but interrupt. "I always hated it when I was in school and they would do a mother daughter event. Or ask us to make our family tree. The first time they had all the mothers come in to help with a project in my class, Sam offered to put on a dress and go."

Liz smiled at the memory. "Instead, we ended up playing hooky. We went to Aunt June's Diner. We had pie for breakfast. That became our tradition every time my school had a mother daughter event."

"Sam went to all your parent teacher conferences and all your school plays. He did all the bake sales and the last minute school projects. He was the one sitting up with you when you were sick or had a bad dream. Sam was the one that was always there.

"I keep telling you, you don't need to ever wonder about who your father was. It doesn't matter who your mother was married to or who she was sleeping with or who thought that they were your father. You _know_ who yourfather was. Sam raised you. Sam Milhoan _was_ your father. Nothing and no one can ever change that."

"Sam was -" Reddington shook his head and looked down. When he picked up his head and continued, he didn't talk about Sam. He started back up with the story about her mother and her mother's father. "- Kate's brother, he … was single. Right in front of your grandfather, Katarina suggested that since he didn't have any children and she didn't have a father, he should be her father at the father daughter dance.

"Katarina was practically giddy as she told me the story of how your grandfather exploded. Of how he started yelling at Kate's brother. Telling him that he had no business trying to play father to _his_ daughter."

Liz pointed out. "She couldn't have set him up, she couldn't have tricked him into admitting it if she didn't already suspect."

"Folie a deux is one thing. Folie a trois is harder, but it can work. Once you try to extend it beyond that ..." Reddington shook his head.

Liz waited him out.

"When your mother was born, your grandfather adored her. He couldn't get enough of seeing her – mostly because once she was born and Kate gave up on being a doctor, Kate and Annie picked up and left on a multi year grand tour/crime spree across all of Europe. They didn't come back until it was time for Katarina to start school.

"He would visit them as often as he could, but it was never enough. He wanted to have what Kate and Annie had."

"He wanted my mother."

"Not just your mother. He wanted everything that Kate and Annie had. He wanted their bond, their closeness. The way they completed each other's happiness. And yes, he most certainly wanted your mother.

"He tried to recreate it. He got married.

" _I_ certainly wasn't there so I don't know if they all let your grandfather's new wife in on their little secret or if they left her to figure it out on her own, but dollars to donuts, I would bet ..." Reddington shook his head.

"His new wife began to suspect. Why?"

"The way he treated your mother. His wife gave him sons, but sons aren't the same as daughters. I'm sure it's not that he loved Katarina more than he loved his boys, but with girls it's just easier to show them your affection – especially if you're old world Russian and …" Reddington grimaced "... the way he behaved around Mr. Kaplan."

Liz was excited to learn information about her grandfather – he had been Russian like Annie.

"How was he around Mr. Kaplan?" Liz asked.

She watched as Reddington contemplated a moment before settling on an answer. "Soft."

"Soft?" Liz repeated. His tone and his expression as he said it spoke volumes. A confused Liz protested. "You said he loved my grandmother – He loved Annie."

"He did. Your grandfather loved your grandmother very much, but he was in love with Kate. It was obvious to everyone who knew the three of them … including his wife. It was obvious _even_ to a child."

That just confused Liz even more. "But Mr. Kaplan, she isn't ..."

"No, she isn't." Reddington shook his head dismissively. "Kate wanted Annie. That's all she wanted. That's all she ever wanted. Your grandfather knew that. He respected that, but you can't always control who you love no matter how hopeless or wrong it is."

So much for nothing sordid. "That couldn't have gone over well with his wife."

"No, it didn't." Reddington admitted. "It caused some friction. Friction that Katarina picked up on."

"You said my grandfather had sons. I have uncles somewhere?" Liz asked.

Reddington shook his head.

Liz was disappointed, but not surprised. "What happened to them?"

"They died."

"How long ago?'

"As children."

There seemed to be a lot of that going around. "How?"

"In a car."

Reddington with his carefully truncated sentences wasn't telling her everything or even much of anything. A car crash? A car bomb? Accidentally locking themselves in the car trunk while playing?

The almost pleading look on Reddington's face ... Liz knew for both of their sakes not to keep pushing.

She broke eye contact.

All of this was information that she hadn't had before, but none of it answered the question of how her mother had found out that Annie wasn't her mother.

Who her mother's father was wouldn't have any bearing on who her mother was. Just because her grandfather had feelings for Mr. Kaplan, that didn't mean that Mr. Kaplan was her mother's mother. Feelings were unfortunately _not_ a prerequisite for having a child with someone.

Liz didn't get the idea that Reddington was deliberately avoiding her question, but he hadn't answered it.

Liz had other questions. She let it go thinking he would work his way back around to it.

"Your mother raised my mother. My mother was your ..."

Liz trailed off as she tried to figure out what relation that made Reddington to her mother and by extension her. Reddington supplied his own answer. Even after all these years, the word came out tinged with such bitterness. _"Replacement."_

 _OOO_

Just like at their first meeting, she woke to the dog whining and licking her face.

The sun was rising and light was just beginning to filter in through the holes in the cabin's construction.

Picking herself up off the ground, stepping around the dead body, on _two_ feet she made her way over to the door to let the dog out of the cabin.

It had been difficult to resist the urge to leave immediately once she had succeeded in freeing herself but she had made herself be sensible.

At the last possible second, the idea had occurred to her to try to use the trap to break or at least weaken one of the links of her chain.

It had taken several tries but once that was accomplished, she had been able to take the leg shackle and the end of the chain with her to retrieve the key to the leg shackle.

It was too late in the day to start off right away – not to go out into woods she didn't know with no clear direction in mind. She had forced herself to wait for the new day.

By choice, she had spent the night on the floor instead of the camp bed.

She had already packed the night before the minimal amount of supplies she would be carrying out with her. Food, water, and a tarp to keep off the cold ground if she needed to take shelter in the woods at night. It could be one day or it could be a dozen before she found her way out of the woods. She had no idea.

Despite searching the cabin, she hadn't been able to find any of her things that she had arrived with.

Shouldering the pack with her provisions, she opened the door to leave.

She startled as the dog came padding back in.

She had forgotten about him.

He again sniffed and whined at his owner's unmoving form before turning to stare up at her expectantly.

Unsure what to do about him, Kate stared back.

OOO

She really shouldn't have been surprised. She expected Raymond would have gone through her apartments to ensure that there was nothing that led back to him … still, she hadn't expected to find a vacant lot.

If one was gone, it only followed that they were all gone.

She made her way to a nearby coffee house with internet. Logging into her online accounts, she found that Raymond had been nothing if not thorough.

There were people she knew, people she could reach out to for money and other assistance, but … She wasn't ready to see anyone she knew. Not yet.

In the moment, the thing that bothered her the most, her most pressing need was for one of her spare pairs of glasses.

Her scars were concealable, but her broken glasses were drawing attention and more importantly causing her constant headaches.

Unfortunately, they were prescription and not the kind that could be replaced in about an hour.

She could think of one other place where she might find a pair ...

 _OOO_

It had started to rain. Wearing a solid colored plastic rain bonnet the sides of her face were covered. Looking like any other little old lady who had just had her hair done and didn't want the rain to ruin it, she blended into the crowd.

Standing outside across the street from Vanessa's apartment, she realized she was being ridiculous. Her glasses were special order. It would take a few days, but she should just go buy another pair.

It was late and she was exhausted, but she could manage a simple wallet lift or two until she got enough cash for a room for her and her new companion for the evening.

She was about to go, but then she saw Vanessa leave the building.

 _tbc_

A/N Reviews are greatly appreciated.


	24. Wherefore and Why

_Wherefore and Why_

"Your mother raised my mother. My mother was your ..."

Liz tried to figure out what relation that made Reddington to her mother and by extension her, but Reddington supplied his own answer. _"Replacement."_

Even after all these years, the word came out tinged with such bitterness.

"Kate cost Annie a child so she got her a shiny new one and when that one stopped working, Kate got Annie a newer, even shinier one."

There was a logic to it – a flawed _child's_ logic. Liz asked him. "How old was Mr. Kaplan when she met Annie? When she had my mother?"

Aram had been confused by that. He had said that the age was a little off. Mr. Kaplan wasn't old enough to be the med student who broke up Reddington's parent's marriage.

Liz tried to do the math in her head but while she thought she knew her own age, she realized that she wasn't sure how old her mother had been when Liz was born.

Reddington answered by repeating something he's told her before. "Kate was a baby duck."

"How old?" Liz asked again.

"This is going to come as a complete shock given what a model citizen you've always known her to be, but Kate lied her way into medical school. She skipped a few of the prerequisites."

"What prerequisites?"

"When you meet someone in a certain context, it's only natural to make assumptions about them. For instance, if someone is in medical school you assume they have also been to college and before that high school. And if your husband brings home one of his medical students to attempt to seduce you assume if she's good for the goose, she must be good for the gander."

Liz was beginning to suspect that like the question of how her mother found out that Annie wasn't her mother, Reddington was just going to talk around the subject of Mr. Kaplan's age without answering the question.

She was wrong.

"One slightly chilly evening the summer before she should have gone to high school, Kate's brother caught her in the loft of their barn fooling around with who, by the Letterman jacket he caught sight of as they were disappearing up the ladder, he _thought_ was their neighbor's son. Being annoying in that way that all little brothers are, he took away the ladder and ran to tell their parents to get her in trouble."

Liz stated the obvious. "It wasn't their neighbor's son."

"No, it wasn't." Reddington agreed. "It was their neighbor's daughter in her brother's borrowed Letterman jacket that Kate had been kissing behind the hay bales in the barn loft."

By just the look on Reddington's face, even before his cryptic words, Liz could already tell that she wasn't going to like where this was headed.

"Kate's brother didn't know. He didn't realize the kind of trouble he was starting. Sometimes, we do things and we have no concept of the consequences of those actions. Sometimes we do one thing and we start a domino effect the final results of which we never could have anticipated."

Dread mounting, Liz asked. "What happened?"

Reddington looked down at his hands.

"Mr. Kaplan's parents were good Christian people. They did what good Christian people do when they find their daughter in the barn doing unchristian things with their neighbor's daughter instead of with their neighbor's son. They sent her off to be _fixed_."

"Fixed?"

Reddington said it almost flippantly. "They wanted to pray away the gay. They sent her to one of those summer camps – Get to swim, hike, and canoe while learning how to _not_ like other girls. _"_

Liz was aghast. "They sent her for conversion therapy?"

"I've never understood that. Who thought that a camp for that would be a good idea? If you're against the idea of girls being with girls why would you bring together a group of girls that you know are all attracted to other girls? It just seems counter intuitive to me."

Reddington gave a slight, dismissive shake of the head and moved on, but Liz couldn't.

Liz was a trained forensic psychologist. She knew what conversion therapy entailed. The movie _A Clockwork Orange_ depicted an extreme version of it, but it did covered the basic tenets. If her mother was looking for an explanation for why Mr. Kaplan wasn't touchy-feely like Annie, Liz had one possible answer for her.

The almost flippant way that he said it and the way he breezed past it, she doubted Reddington fully and truly understood.

"Kate didn't want to be fixed. She didn't need to be fixed. She liked what she liked so one day after a few weeks of being there, she had had enough. She left – well she tried to leave. Kate became their very own Cool Hand Luke escaping at least once a week only to be brought back … until she realized that she had to leave them a little misdirect if she was really going to get out of there.

"She stole money from the camp's office to pay for her travel incidentals and she untied one of the canoes to give the impression that she was headed down stream. She scuttled the boat so it wouldn't get caught up on some rocks or branches and be found right away and she headed out on foot in a different direction."

Despite already being fairly certain of the answer, Liz couldn't stop herself from asking. "Did she go home?"

"Sometimes you feel you can't go home anymore."

"Did she try?"

Reddington gave a slight shake of the head. "She had written a letter to her parents after a few weeks of camp pleading for them to come back for her. They told her no. She needed to stay. She couldn't come home until she was better."

Liz kept trying. "Surely when they heard how unhappy she was there – how she kept running away?"

"Earthly concerns." Reddington answered dryly. "They were worried about her mortal soul."

Unwilling to accept what Reddington said, Liz suggested. "When she went missing - her parents must have been frantic not knowing where she was."

"They didn't have to wonder for long. There was a search, but it didn't last long. Naturally, no body was every found, but the boat was found quite quickly once the police got involved and started dragging the river. They came to the determination that Kate drowned."

Maybe it was the way that Reddington had started the story, but Liz was struck with the thought - "Her poor brother. To have to live with the guilt of causing – however unintentionally - his sister's death."

"It ate him up inside for the longest time. For years, he made sure to be there to testify at every one of the parole hearings."

Liz looked at him confused. "What parole hearings?"

"For his sister's killers."

Liz wasn't following. "I don't understand. What killers?"

"Kate's drowning wasn't determined to be an accidental one. When they found the canoe and realized it had been deliberately sunk, the police began asking questions."

Reddington's lips curled slightly. "Kate … there was just something about Kate. She always had this way of drawing people in to her. Or maybe the other children just didn't want to be there anymore than Kate had. When she went missing the last time and the police came around asking questions some of the other children banded together. They came forward with the same story - that a few of the counselors had caught Kate trying to take the canoe and took turns holding her under the water to punish her. One of them had held her under for a little too long. When they realized what had happened, they tried to cover up what they had done by letting Kate's body go and sinking the canoe."

Liz was stunned.

"The counselors were all arrested and the camp was closed."

"Did Mr. Kaplan ever realize what went on after she left?"

Reddington nodded his head. "She knew. She even went to one of the parole hearings herself – just to observe, not to make an impact statement, mind you. That's how her brother found her. It had been close to twenty years since that summer, but the moment he saw her, he recognized her."

The summer before high school. Liz didn't want to imagine a 13 or 14 year old girl – even a 13 or 14 year old as resourceful as she was sure Mr. Kaplan would have been even then – living alone on the streets. "If she didn't go home, where did Mr. Kaplan go? How did she survive?"

"Mr. Kaplan was always more clever than the average bear. She took a bus to Boston and enrolled at a college."

"College?" Liz repeated.

"It is or at least was actually harder to enroll in high school then than it was to enroll in college. To register for high school you had to manufacture a parent or guardian to enroll you. For college you just need to provide transcripts or in Mr. Kaplan's case give the name of a high school that had recently been in the news as burning down to explain the lack of transcripts.

"Another great advantage to college over high school is it includes room and board." Reddington added.

Mr. Kaplan safely ensconced in some school with three meals a day and a warm, clean and safe place to sleep being provided - Liz liked that idea better than the horrors that she had been imagining of a young girl trying to live on the streets. Still, she wondered. "How did she pay for it?"

"How did she pay for anything back then? She stole the money. She robbed a bank."

Liz blinked.

Most girls had their last growth spurt by the time they were 14. Physically at least, she might have been able to pass. Academically, it explained the atrocious first year grades Aram had uncovered.

Reddington still hadn't exactly answered her question. "How old was she when she met Annie?"

Four years of college followed by some years of med school - Liz guessed Mr. Kaplan must have been at least twenty.

"Neither one of my parents had the good sense of one of the bartenders working the bar at The Old Colony Inn."

"What?" Liz wasn't following.

"Glen's notell motel." Reddington explained.

Hearing the hostility in his voice yet again as he talked about his mother, Liz stated the obvious. "You never forgave Annie."

Reddington grimaced. He looked at her so forlornly as he admitted. "I tried to. I _wanted_ to ..." He looked down and shook his head.

"So that's your connection to me? Your mother raised my mother?" Having asked the question, Liz tried to read his expression, but his face was still tilted down.

There was a pause before without looking up, Reddington committed to an answer with a nod.

Liz felt so deflated.

She summarized. "We're related, but not related."

Reddington said nothing.

Liz couldn't understand her crushing sense of disappointment.

She had more questions, so many more questions, but for now she couldn't take any more answers. She needed to leave.

"Mr. Kaplan said that Agnes is someplace safe and loved where no one can ever find her and hurt her again. No one can use her to get to you or to me. I want it to stay that way. Don't look for them anymore. _Promise me._ "

Reddington refused. "I can't promise you that, Lizzie."

"This isn't _your_ decision. It's _mine_."

" _And Tom's._ He's Agnes' father. Doesn't he get a say in this?"

"Tom has agreed."

Reddington shook his head. "I don't believe that. Tom would never agree to that."

"He called me while I was driving here." Liz winced as she admitted. "I saw that it was him calling and I didn't pick up. He left me a voice mail. He said he saw Mr. Kaplan. She -"

Reddington interrupted. He sounded offended. " -Tom has seen Mr. Kaplan?! Mr. Kaplan went to Tom? Not to me?!"

Liz didn't know how to respond to Reddington's devastated expression.

Reddington quickly changed tracks going from offended to concerned. "Did he say how she was?"

Shaking her head, Liz told him what she did know. "Mr. Kaplan convinced him that putting Agnes up for adoption is for the best."

Reddington shook his head. "Lizzie no!"

"This is the way it's going to be." Liz told him. "You need to accept it. We all need to accept it. We need to grieve and move on."

With that, Liz turned and walked by a still silent Dembe to leave.

 _OOO_

Kate had had a key to Vanessa's apartment before Vanessa had.

Aware of Vanessa and wanting her to come work for him, but having no leverage on her and knowing that she wasn't motivated by money, Raymond had given Vanessa – who previously wasn't even on their radar - to the FBI as one of his Blacklisters. He had flushed her out into the open to make her need his protection.

Before doing that, he had tasked Kate with making arrangements for a suitable safehouse and any other needs Vanessa might have.

Kate had intercepted Vanessa at the airport when the FBI started closing in on her.

All business, Kate had explained Reddington's offer and brought her to the apartment. She had left Vanessa there at the apartment with a fresh burner phone containing Kate's contact information and the promise that their now mutual employer, Raymond Reddington, was himself on his way to make her acquaintance.

Only Raymond hadn't made it to the apartment that day. Instead, Kate had received a *77 call from Elizabeth.

Busy dealing with that situation, Kate hadn't had time to respond to any of the multiple calls and texts from Vanessa throughout the day.

As the Cabal's people closed in on their second makeshift hospital, needing someone to live to carry out his elaborate plans, Raymond had insisted that Kate leave. Pressing the Smith & Wesson she carried into his hands, with great reluctance she had done as he insisted.

While Kate had been otherwise occupied, Vanessa's messages had progressed from simple requests for an update to demands for answers and finally to threats to leave and take her chances against the FBI on her own.

Knowing the part that Vanessa needed to play in Raymond's plans, Kate found herself back at the apartment to respond to Vanessa's many outraged messages.

Having been stood up, Vanessa had demanded to know when she could expect to meet the elusive Raymond Reddington.

As Kate was trying and failing to put to words the reason for her 'employer's' absence, Vanessa managed to correctly surmise why Raymond wasn't there and why Kate had no estimate on when he would be.

Before Kate could bring herself to actually confirm it aloud, Kate's phone had rung. It was Raymond himself calling Kate to tell her that she should head back … and bring a lot of heavy duty trash bags.

Kate wasn't usually one for putting on emotional displays and despite having just experienced such an emotional about-face by most standards she really hadn't put on one. There hadn't been any waterworks.

Still, Vanessa's curiosity had clearly been piqued by Kate's behavior, by her reaction to the death and resurrection of her 'employer'.

As Kate tried to excuse herself to get back to Raymond, Vanessa had startled her. Vanessa had put her arms around Kate and held her.

Neither had made any mention of it the next day when Kate returned to pass out Vanessa's first assignment. Nor the time after that. Or the time after that.

It wasn't until Raymond had been well enough to decide to interject himself into the situation that the dynamics of their relationship had started to shift.

When Raymond had tried to introduce himself to Vanessa and fill her in on the details of her next assignment, Vanessa hadn't … _appreciated_ being passed on to a new handler.

Raymond had had to call Kate to diffuse the situation.

Kate retained a key and as the one who set them up knew the reset code to the security system of every safehouse she arranged for the use of Raymond and his associates, but she didn't have a key for Vanessa's anymore.

Finding having a key to the apartment of someone she was seeing socially - however casually - to be crossing a line, Kate had turned the key over to Vanessa.

Vanessa had appreciated the intent of the gesture, but had tried to return the key to Kate.

Seeing having one as more of a commitment than she was willing to make, Kate had refused the offer. After much back and forth, Vanessa had in the end left a key hidden for her outside the apartment.

It was still there.

Letting herself into the apartment, Kate spotted Vanessa's car keys still in the dish by the door. Either Vanessa hadn't gone far or wherever she was going she hadn't wanted to take her own car.

It didn't matter. Kate didn't plan to be more than a minute.

Kate was familiar with the apartment layout and the nighttime city lights spilling in through the many windows provided enough illumination that Kate didn't feel the need to turn on any lights as she headed straight up the stairs to the master bedroom.

In the drawer that she had left them in, she found the case with her spare pair of glasses. Taking them out, for lack of anything better to do with them, she left the broken pair in their place. Not wanting to leave any indication that she had been there, she was careful to reclose the drawer.

It wasn't until she went to the walk in closet that she had to actually turn on a light. There she knew she would find a ready bag with a healthy supply of cash. She only planned to borrow a little, just enough for a room for the night and some travel funds to get to other of her accounts – ones Raymond had no reason to know about having never put money into them.

In the closet, she spotted a few clear dry cleaning bags with her own freshly cleaned and pressed clothing in them.

Vanessa was very observant. While she wasn't likely to notice a few hundred dollars missing out of tens of thousands, she would immediately notice the clothes missing.

Not planning to still be there when Vanessa got back, Kate was okay with that. She took the two bags off the rack to take with her.

Kate's pulse rate sped up as she heard the door downstairs open. After a slight pause she heard it close again.

She could hear Vanessa's heels clicking across the downstairs floor. When she couldn't hear them anymore, she knew it was because they were being muffled by the carpeted stairs.

Kate didn't hesitated. She put the dry cleaning bags back into place before turning out the closet light and stepping fully into the closet. The dog that had trailed just a few steps behind her everywhere she went since leaving the cabin slipped into the darkened closet with her as she closed the door.

"I got all the way to my car before I realized that I had forgotten my car keys."

Kate had no illusions about who Vanessa was talking to. Still, she made no move to come out.

"I know you're in there. I'm not going to bother to open the door. I'm just going to shoot you through it – and your little dog too."

Wouldn't that be the height of irony?

Reluctantly, Kate answered back. "I'd really rather you didn't."

" _Kate?!"_

As Vanessa rushed at the closet doors to open them, Kate cringed regretting making this ill advised stop.

It wasn't just that she wasn't ready to see anyone she knew – she wasn't ready to be _seen_ by anyone she knew.

Kate wasn't used to having a dog. Once Vanessa tugged open the doors, with the lights now on throughout the bedroom, Kate noticed the muddy footprints the dog had left everywhere they had been as it trailed behind her.

Vanessa didn't seem concerned about her stained carpet.

As Vanessa tried to rush at her, not wanting to be touched, Kate managed to stop short of putting up a hand defensively, but she did find herself sidestepping to return a bit of distance between them.

Reading her body language, Vanessa stopped. She looked concerned, but she didn't try again to make physical contact.

Kate tried to remember where exactly her and Vanessa had left off with their on again off again relationship. It may not have been that long ago, but to Kate it seemed forever ago.

"Where have you been?! I tried calling you! You never answered and then your phone went out of service! Reddington wouldn't tell me anything and then he just stopped taking my calls! The way he was acting, I thought something had happened to you! Kate, I was beginning to think he did something to you!"

"I'm fine."

"You don't look fine. What happened? Where have you been?"

Kate tried to spin the situation. She tried to play it off as if her disappearance had only to do with her relationship with Vanessa. "I'm sorry. I should have called, but I thought a clean break would be better for the both of us."

Kate kept her tone calm and matter of fact. "I just came to get some things that I left here."

The way Vanessa was scrutinizing her, it was clear that Vanessa wasn't buying it.

Vanessa put it out there without any preamble. "I'm sorry about your friend Nikos."

By Vanessa's tone and expression, it was obvious what it was about Little Nikos that Vanessa was sorry.

Kate turned away so that Vanessa couldn't see her expression as she closed her eyes and pressed her lips together.

She couldn't say she was surprised. Nikos hadn't been in the healthiest of shape to start with and Tom had certainly put him through his paces.

Vanessa went on to explain how she knew. "After a while, when I didn't hear from you, I tried calling back the last number you called me from. I spoke to Maisy. Kate, what happened in Amarillo?"

Kate could tell that Vanessa was testing her.

If Vanessa had spoken to Nikos' assistant, Maisy, then Vanessa knew what had happened in Amarillo – Raymond Reddington had happened.

Still, Kate couldn't bring herself to say it.

Instead, she admitted. "I was really hoping to be in and out before you came back."

Despite everything, Kate really felt that she was doing a good job of managing to keep it together.

She might have been able to continue doing so if Vanessa hadn't noticed and pointed out … "Kate … where is your ring?"

Of course Vanessa would notice the ring's absence.

Kate's continued wearing of a ring from a previous relationship while resisting doing anything - like accepting a key or having a drawer – that would in the slightest way suggest that _their_ relationship was progressing away from something casual had at one point been a bone of contention during their on again off again relationship … until Raymond had taken it upon himself to tell Vanessa the ring's origins – or at least what he knew of the ring's origins.

"I …" Kate looked down at her bare hand.

She had searched the cabin, but she hadn't been able to find any of her things. She hadn't cared about her clothes, the loss of her shoes had been problematic, but the ring … the ring …

Kate used her other hand to cover the ringless hand so that she didn't have to see it anymore before telling Vanessa. "... I ... lost it."

Vanessa called her out on the lie. "I don't believe that. You couldn't have lost it. How do you lose something that you never take off?"

Kate didn't say anything.

Vanessa looked at her, scrutinizing her some more before …

Vanessa made a request. "Kate, take off the rain bonnet."

At the mere suggestion, Kate's hand instinctively went up to the right side of her face.

Kate shook her head.

Vanessa said it again. "Kate, take it off."

"It's raining." Kate argued.

"Not in here, it's not." Vanessa countered while starting to reclose the distance Kate had put between them earlier.

Kate wasn't ready for this. Not yet.

She needed to get out and quickly. As she made her way past Vanessa trying to get down the stairs and to the door as quickly as possible, Kate apologized. "I'm sorry. I have to go, but I'll call you as -"

Vanessa knew Kate better than to give chase, but with just a few words, Vanessa managed to stop her in her tracks. "- _I know where Kirk has Agnes."_

Already down the stairs and almost to the door, Kate turned back.

The shock of it grounded her. "You can't mean … ? No! It's been months! Raymond still hasn't gotten her back?"

"No. He hasn't. He hasn't even come close, but -" Vanessa spoke slowly, stalling, as she came down the stairs stalking closer with every word. She amended her previous statement. "- I know where she will be in a few days. Kirk is coming here and he's bringing Agnes with him."

Kate couldn't believe it. "No! Constantine would never be so foolish as to come back here!"

Down the stairs, Vanessa didn't try to approach her again. Instead, she moved to place herself between Kate and the door - cutting off her exit.

"He's coming here to meet with some doctor. His name is Dr. Goodwin. He's a specialist. He's in the forefront of his field. Kirk thinks he's his last, best hope, but Dr. Goodwin is in high demand. He has too many other patients. He refused to travel out of the country or even out of the state to meet with Kirk."

Kate reeled. She was overwhelmed trying to take it all in. To think that all this time Agnes had been missing – no, worse that missing - she had been with Constantine.

Vanessa knew Kate well. She didn't try to push. She didn't offer Kate an exit, but she offered her space.

"You look awful. Go upstairs. Take a shower and ..." Vanessa said it – whose clothes are you wearing? – without actually saying it. "... get into your own clothes. I'll make you something to eat and we can talk about the next step of the plan."

Kate nodded.

It wasn't so much the idea of getting clean with a hot shower that convinced her, or even the thought of getting out of the clothes that she knew had belonged to someone who had met a fate worse than hers.

It was simply that she needed time to collect herself because …

Constantine still had Agnes …

And the longer Constantine had Agnes, the more likely it was that he would discover the truth ...

And if Constantine discovered the truth …

There was no telling what he might do.

 _OOO_

Kate came back downstairs feeling a bit refreshed and certainly more focused. She had taken off the rain bonnet … and replaced it with one of her scarves. It covered most of her hair and came down the sides of her face to be tied securely in a knot under her chin.

Having looked in the mirror upstairs, it was obvious why Vanessa had been so blunt. Some of her bruising was still evident and even Kate's own clothes didn't fit her anymore. She had had to put a new hole in the belt to make one of her skirts work.

Vanessa with the help of a porterhouse had succeeded in making nice with Kate's traveling companion.

Vanessa's eyes immediately went to the scarf, but she refrained from commenting. At least not directly …

Leadingly, Vanessa asked. "Should I call Reddington? So we can go over the next step of the plan together? You'll have to give me his new number though. I seem to have fallen off the list for the updates on number changes."

Kate answered simply. "No."

"You're not going to involve Reddington?"

Kate admitted. "No."

Vanessa said nothing. She waited clearly looking for more of a response, an explanation.

Kate didn't offer one.

Eventually, Vanessa broke the silence. "Are you going to involve Elizabeth?"

Kate shook her head. "No. Not yet. I won't get her hopes up after all this time until I have something definite."

Vanessa nodded. "Sit down before you fall down. Eat something and then we can talk."

 _OOO_

It was late when Kate first arrived.

It was later still by the time all the details were worked out and the plan was settled upon.

Vanessa invited her to stay.

Kate declined.

Vanessa offered her the guest room.

It was very late and Kate was exhausted. At the coffee shop the dog had just waited for her outside. That wasn't going to work at a hotel. For a hotel, the dog was going to be a problem.

Kate knew that - just like coming here - it was a bad idea, but she was simply too exhausted to function. She gave in.

 _OOO_

Kate woke to someone in the room with her.

Undressing her.

She froze.

She kept her body perfectly still and her eyes closed as she tried to assess the situation. Tried to remember where she was.

She tried to inhale and exhale at a natural pace to not give away that she was awake – to keep the element of surprise.

By her perfume, Kate recognized it was Vanessa. Kate started to calm down until she realized Vanessa was untying the knot under her chin that was keeping the scarf in place around her face even while she slept.

"Don't." Kate warned her.

But she was too late to stop her.

Kate opened her eyes in time to see Vanessa's expression as the scarf slipped off. Vanessa's hand went up to cover her mouth in horror at the sight of the side of Kate's face.

Kate didn't hold it against her. She had had the very same reaction the very first time she had seen it. And the second time. And the third. And even just a few hours ago catching her own reflection as she was coming out of the shower.

Kate smiled grimly. "I warned you not to."

"Kate ..." Vanessa tried to apologize for her visceral reaction. "I just wasn't expecting it." She tried to lie. "It's not that bad. It's -"

Kate looked away from her.

" _Kate, what happened?"_

When Vanessa tried to reach out towards her, to touch her face, Kate pulled away. She stood. "I should be going."

Vanessa went from horrified to apologetic to concerned to outraged in the span of just a few seconds. "Did Reddington do that to you? You didn't lose your ring. You can't lose something you never take off. Did Reddington take it from you? Is that what happened? Did he do this to you and take Annie's ring from you?"

Looking down, Kate shook her head. "I'm sorry. I can't do this right now. I'll wait for the signal at the safe house." Kate headed for the door.

Vanessa tried to stop her from leaving. "Kate, please. I'm sorry. Don't go!"

Picking up on the tension in the room, Kate's companion put himself between them. It seemed whatever affection or loyalty Vanessa had bought herself with the Porterhouse had run out.

Kate was able to slip out the door of the bedroom and the apartment leaving the dog behind.

She made it a block into the darkness before he was back at her side.

 _tbc_


	25. Looking at the Rain

_Looking At the Rain_

Looking at the rain  
Feeling the pain  
Of love lost running though  
My brain  
Looking at the wind  
Watching it spin  
The leaves along the street  
You win

Waiting for a line to fall  
Telling you it's all a big mistake

Looking at a face  
So out of place  
Inside that picture frame  
Of lace  
Looking at the wall  
Wishing you'd call  
And tell me you're okay  
That's all

Wishing this was all a dream  
And I'd find you sleeping when I wake

Looking at the trees  
So ill at ease  
From sleep that will not come  
That's me  
Looking at the dawn  
Knowing it's wrong  
Still thinking of your love  
That's gone

Wishing this was all a dream  
And I'd find you sleeping when I wake

Looking at the rain  
Feeling the pain  
Of love lost running though  
My brain  
Looking at the wind  
Watching it spin  
The leaves along the street  
You win

Waiting for a line to fall  
Telling you it's all a big mistake  
But the words won't come  
I know I'd feel the same  
Looking at the rain

-Gordon Lightfoot 

_OOO_

"She should have asked if that was the only connection."

Raymond said nothing.

Eventually Dembe too walked away.

All alone, Raymond poured himself a drink and sank into the buttery softness of the leather chair.

 _OOO_

As soon as Liz walked out of the elevator, Aram sprang up out of his seat like a very tightly wound Jack-in-the-box. "You're back!"

He had been watching, waiting for her. He had a file in his hand and a hesitant look on his face. "Liz, I found something."

Unsure what more she could take today, trying to gage how much she needed to brace herself, Liz tried to read Aram's expression rather than the folder.

Her hand reached up to clasp the locket she now wore around her neck as she told him what she had surmised. "Not something good."

Aram paused before answering. He admitted. "I don't know. I don't know if you will take it as something good or something bad, but … it's definitely something."

Solemnly, he held the folder out to Liz.

Liz just stared at it unready to take it.

"Is it about Agnes?"

"No." Aram was quick to shake his head.

Liz had to ask again to assure herself. "It's not about Agnes?"

"No, it's not about Agnes."

Not at all comfortable with how unsure Aram looked about what her reaction would be to his information, rather than just take the folder and open it, Liz continued to play twenty questions with him.

"Is it about Mr. Kaplan? Or is it about the Woodsman?"

Aram hadn't been the only one waiting for her.

Before Aram could answer, Ressler came rushing down the steps outside Cooper's office.

Seeing her face, Donald asked. "Liz, what happened?"

Liz wasn't ready to talk about her decision. She just shook her head.

Having found her talking with Aram and seeing the file in his hand, Donald took him to be the cause of her behavior. "Aram, what's in the folder?"

Ressler didn't give Aram time to respond before trying to answer his own question. "Is this about what you found right before Liz got the letter from Mr. Kaplan?"

"No!" Aram answered emphatically – a little _too_ emphatically for Liz's comfort. He went from hesitant to downright alarmed looking.

Her eyes on Aram, Liz only half listened as Donald turned to her and tried to fill her in on what he was talking about.

"Aram tracked down the other doctors from Mr. Kaplan's last medical program. They're dead. Not just some of them - all of them. Aram started to tell us about it but then …" Donald stumbled momentarily before ending less than smoothly. "... we got interrupted."

 _By me._ Liz knew it, but she didn't say it and neither did he.

Donald turned to Aram. "What happened? How did they all die?"

The color drained from Aram's face. "That's not what I wanted to tell Liz."

Donald wasn't reading the room. "You started to say something about them all being together on a bus or a plane."

Aram denied it. "I never said that. Agent Navabi suggested that – not me."

"Okay, but you _did_ say that they were all dead. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's not a coincidence. How did they die?"

The way that Aram was acting, Liz was sure she didn't want to know, but Donald asked. "What's in the file?"

"They – they -" Aram's face muscles tensed and he stumbled with his words. "That's not what I wanted to talk about! That's not what's in the file!"

Changing the topic, Aram began talking very fast. "The file is about the prints from the cabin. Director Cooper wanted them run. He told me to run them against every single database I could find until I got a match."

Donald agreed. "I remember that."

Aram's body language relaxed – somewhat – at the acceptance of the changing of the topic. Moistening his lips, he started to explain. I got one. I got a hit on one of the prints from the cabin. It was for a missing girl."

"A girl?" Ressler frowned. "Don't these types of killers usually have a type? I thought all the other bodies and bones had been older. 30's to early 40's. Mr. Kaplan was older than his usual preference, but she was more of a victim of opportunity."

Liz wasn't saying anything so a spitballing Donald played her part as profiler. "But then maybe she wasn't the only opportunity to fall into the Woodsman's lap. "How old was the missing girl?"

"Well ..." Liz listened to Aram hedge. "She was thirteen when she was reported missing … but that was … more than sixty years ago."

Donald raised both an eyebrow and his voice. " _Sixty_ years ago?"

Having had enough, Liz was relieved to put an end to the latest mystery. "Old news, Aram. The prints belong to Mr. Kaplan. Reddington already covered this."

"Really?" Aram looked completely caught off guard.

Liz gave a slight nod.

Aram persisted. "He told you _who_ she was?"

Not really listening anymore, Liz nodded again and turned to Donald. "I need to go now."

Aram held out the folder to her again. "I have the missing person's report. I thought you might like to read it."

Liz took the folder …

And not caring to read about the crocodile tears of parents who were so small minded that they had turned their backs on their daughter over something so inconsequential …

She immediately dropped it in the waste basket.

Without saying anything more, Liz turned to go.

Not even bothering to get his jacket from the office, Donald hurried to catch up with her.

 _OOO_

Hours later, Raymond was sure he was dreaming as he heard that familiar staccato beat of her heels on the floor.

Opening his eyes, he wasn't sure why he had invented a four legged companion for her.

It was irrational but his first thought seeing Mr. Kaplan's hair was that the shock of what the Woodsman had done to her had caused her hair to turn white.

Then the rational part of his mind kicked in to tell him that it was her natural color. At her age, the brown hair had to have been the result of coloring – a luxury she wouldn't have been afforded during her time in captivity. Since escaping, she simply hadn't colored again.

Happy to see her, Raymond smiled his most brilliant, most sincere smile. "Mr. Kaplan!"

He tried to stand to greet her, but he found it was all he could do to keep his head up. He managed to flail a hand and knock his empty glass to the floor.

His body might not work, but his mind could – though perhaps not as quickly as usual. "You drugged me!"

He didn't bother to ask how she had gotten into his safe house. Mr. Kaplan had been in charge of his safe houses for so long. She had selected this one personally.

"You are a creature of habit, Raymond." She chided him. "You really should have updated your security protocols. At the _very_ least gotten all new safe houses."

"Dembe said as much."

What could he say? He was like one of those parents whose children had run away or gone missing. He admitted as much to his ghost of Christmas Past. "I was afraid that if I left you might not be able to find your way back to me."

"You really think that little of me?"

He just kept on smiling, so happy to see her.

He said it so magnanimously. "I forgive you."

Mr. Kaplan reminded him. "I didn't do anything that requires your forgiveness."

His smile beginning to falter, Raymond admitted. _"I'm_ sorry."

" _You_ should be."

Managing to raise his hand, he reached out in a clumsy attempt to touch her scarred cheek. He suspected her involuntary flinch had less to do with fear of him and more to do with the man from the cabin.

Seeing her flinch …

This woman who had made no attempt to run or escape from him, who hadn't tried to plead or bargain, who had calmly walked into the woods with him in full knowledge of what they were there for …

This woman who had gone eye to eye with him at his angriest and refused to back down …

Seeing her flinch broke his heart in a way he couldn't describe.

His motor skills weren't what they should be, but catching his hand, she guided it to her face.

He wouldn't describe the wound as closed and he certainly couldn't describe it as healed. More a furrow than a crater, the flesh was still red and terribly angry looking.

Raymond remembered her little pirouette in the woods. As either the cause or a result, his shot hadn't been centered. More than a gazing, but not a direct hit.

As he ghosted his fingertips along one edge of the deep trench he had left on her cheek, she reprimanded him. "You were penny wise, but pound foolish. What have Itold you?"

Raymond's eyebrows knit together. He had to swallow before answering. " _Always_ double tap."

He wanted desperately, so very desperately to avert his eyes from her torn cheek, but he wouldn't let himself.

"I'm sorry for what I did and ... for what he did."

She put his hand back down for him. "I'm not here to talk about that. I'm here to tell you it's time we went our separate ways. Don't look for me, Raymond."

"I don't want to go our separate ways. I want you back."

"We both know that can't happen, Raymond. Not after this."

" _Words_ cannot express how much I have missed you these past few months. Don't leave me, Kate."

"Raymond, do you remember the time you dragged me to Laredo looking for those cookies you love?"

His attempt at a nod made his head loll alarmingly. "The Bizcochos!" His smile returning, he chuckled. "Mexican holiday cookies! How could I forget? It was the last time you _ever_ let me drive the get away car.

"I bought the bakery out. I was going to give them out to everyone I knew. I bought so many of them, they filled the trunk of the car. At the border, they were convinced we were trying to smuggle something illegal into the country in the cookies. We had to make a run for it. I gunned the car. We had so many cars chasing us!" He laughed.

Until she reminded him. "Just when we finally lost them, you hit that dog -"

So _that_ was why his imaginary Mr. Kaplan had a dog …

"- and you insisted on stopping."

… but that dog hadn't been a Rottweiler.

"You always get so melancholy on the anniversary. I just wanted to provide you with a little adventure. A little diversion to take your mind off of Annie for a little while."

"When it was clear there was nothing that could be done for the dog you put it out of its misery."

Raymond's head again lolled along to Mr. Kaplan's story.

"And then you insisted on staying to bury it. We had the cartel, the Federalis, the FBI and the border patrol breathing down our necks, but you insisted on staying to bury it. Do you remember what you said, Raymond?"

Raymond's smile was gone. "There are some times when a man has to clean up after himself."

"You left me there, Raymond. You didn't even have the decency to bury me like you would a dog."

He admitted the truth. "I couldn't bring myself to look at you. I couldn't look at what I had done. At what I had become."

Her tone held such disappointment. "Goodbye Raymond."

There was something he was forgetting. Something he should ask about. Something very important.

 _Agnes!_

"What about Agnes?"

"I'm taking Agnes. You get Elizabeth."

Raymond protested. "Kate, what are you doing? This _isn't The Parent Trap._ We don't get to each take one. Agnes belongs with her mother."

When she offered no response, he kept at her. "You can't do this to Lizzie. If you want to punish me fine, but _don't_ do this to Lizzie!"

"Raymond, I'm doing this _for_ Elizabeth."

"I don't understand."

When she offered him nothing more, he said it again. "Agnes belongs with her mother. Don't separate them, Kate."

Still she gave him nothing.

His voice caught as he made a counteroffer. "You … you take them both."

He made his suggestion and then held his breath.

She didn't meet his eyes as she simply stated. "No."

Raymond pleaded. "Kate please."

She indicated that there would be no negotiating by changing the topic. "I've taken care of Tom. He won't be a problem going forward."

Raymond wasn't sure what that meant, but he didn't like the sounds of it. He knew he should ask what had befallen Tom, but instead, his voice sounding very small even to himself, he asked. "What will you do? Where will you go?"

Sharply, she answered. "I'm not sure where I will go, but I do know that I _won't_ be doing – I won't be trying to find a quiet, pristine piece of land to run out the last of my days."

Her voice was more even, she was all business as she curtly said it again. "Goodbye Raymond."

As she turned and began to walk away, he called out to her.

"Kate no! Don't go!"

But she just kept going without so much as a backwards glance.

He called out to her again this time using the more personal appellation - the one that had once been used by only her dearest of friends. "Mr. Kaplan please!"

There was no pause in her forward motion.

"Mr. Kaplan! Wait!"

Just before she reached the door, Raymond remembered. "I have something of yours."

Nothing. Not even a hesitation.

Her hand was on the door knob, she was leaving as he called out in desperation. "I have something of _Annie's._ "

As ever, that got her attention. She paused.

Turning around, she eyed him warily as if he could no longer be trusted – which he supposed he couldn't be.

"It's in my vest pocket."

She hesitated, but the lure of it was too great for her to resist.

After she made her way back across the room, he watched rather than felt her reach into his pocket.

He had killed the men who had shot Mr. Kaplan, the ones who had killed Annie and taken her ring. He had found them and he had killed them, but it had taken him weeks. By then, Annie was already in the ground. He couldn't give the ring back to Annie so he had gone to Kate. He had put the ring on her comatose finger himself. In the more than twenty-six years since, he had never seen her without it.

Seeing the ring the Woodsman had taken from her, she sighed. Her expression softened. She put it back on her finger where it belonged. "Thank you, Raymond."

As she bent down to kiss his brow, he closed his eyes and leaned into her kiss trying to memorize every detail of it.

And then she was gone.

OoO

Red woke to the most excruciating headache. As he started to recall his haunted dream of the night before, his hand stole to his pocket.

Mr. Kaplan's ring was gone.

 _Finis_

A/N Okay a couple of things

So I wrote the majority of this story in the days after 4.4? aired. At that point we knew Tom was leaving for Redemption and a lot of people seemed to be lamenting the addition of a baby. We didn't know that the Woodsman would turn out to be a friendly hermit – still no explanation for why he had leg shackles!

A lot of it was based on Mr. Kaplan's comments which have since been perhaps retconned.

Before the events with Nikos, Kate had asked Raymond if he remembered what she looked like that night bleeding in the street with Annie's body. Reddington said no - he wasn't there. She knew he was away.

This exchange left me with the impression that Annie would have been someone that both Mr. Kaplan and Reddington knew.

Also at that point supposedly Raymond had put Liz into Kate's arms as a baby and she promised to protect her. From that I jumped to the conclusion that Kate had to have some connection to Katarina for Raymond to have any expectation that Kate would have access to Elizabeth to protect her.

Maybe they will clean the inconsistencies up next season, but for now they stand.

I could live with it, but I wasn't too happy with how 4.8 ended regarding Mr. Kaplan. While I was happy that she would live to see another day and there was a chance she would pop back up down the road, her excusing of Reddington's shooting of her didn't sit right with me. It played out a little too battered woman syndrome to me.

Of course they came back after the hiatus and rectified that, but I wasn't completely happy with the final ending of that either.

I was hoping for a more happy medium. An ending more like this where she doesn't completely dismiss what he did. She puts a distance between them, but it is left open ended for her to return.

Speaking of which, there is a sequel to this story – _I'll Never Find Another You._


End file.
